


Parallel Connections Over Symmetric Spaces

by viggorlijah



Category: Numb3rs
Genre: F/M, M/M, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2004-02-26
Updated: 2004-02-26
Packaged: 2017-10-17 05:43:08
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 36,960
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/173515
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/viggorlijah/pseuds/viggorlijah
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Learning to live without each other is as hard as life together would be. There is no solution to P vs NP.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Parallel Connections Over Symmetric Spaces

**Author's Note:**

  * Translation into Русский available: [Параллельные связи между симметричными пространствами](https://archiveofourown.org/works/4246425) by [ohne_titel](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ohne_titel/pseuds/ohne_titel)



**Parallel 1**

The cab drops him off on the curb, and Charlie stands there for a while. He should go inside, shower. Take some aspirin or maybe just go to sleep. The light's on in his dad’s bedroom, which means he’s awake. Not exactly waiting up for him, but still. If Charlie wanted to talk or - he thinks about what he could talk about to his father about.

There's a faint light inside, and for a moment, he thinks maybe it's Don, waiting up for him.

It's the projector from the case, the enlarged dollar bills still there, scribbles and lines across it. A yellow post-it stuck right over that, and he goes over and reads it. _"Let me know what happened! Amita"_

He could call Amita. He could call Larry. He should maybe call Larry. Except then Larry would know, and Charlie knows that Don wouldn’t want that. He switches the projector off, sits down in the dark for a while.

He can still smell sex on himself, on his clothes.

He goes down to the basement and finds the box, calls a cab and waits outside on the curb. He does everything quietly so his father won’t hear, won’t come downstairs and ask questions that Charlie can’t really answer. It’s his box anyway. Kind of. He's got a share in it now.

It's cold, and his eyes sting from the wind, and he really wants to just - He starts thinking about the equation behind the density of a neutrino-rich star mass, a problem he promised Larry he'd get to. He works through the problem on the drive. The cab driver has a notebook and a pen he sells Charlie for three bucks, and he writes down the rest of the equation with the box balanced on his knee as a desk, in the lobby of Don's building. The night guy knows him, and Charlie even remembers his name. "Hey, Fred," he says and there's maybe ten, twenty minutes where it's okay. The equation is working and it's not finished, but the part he needed, the _idea_ of it, that's there.

He tucks the notebook and the pencil in his pocket. He had a clip-on pen earlier but he's lost it somewhere and -

He left it on the nightstand in the hotel. She slid it out of his shirt pocket when it bumped up against her when they were - she took it off, and then - Charlie picks up the box and goes into the elevator. He leans back against the elevator wall and closes his eyes.

"Don," he calls, knocking on his brother’s door.

Then Don's there and he has the box and Charlie says without thinking, "You always had cool stuff," but it's okay. Don doesn't know what happened. It's just words.

"Family first," Don says, holding the ring. Charlie leans against the wall. If he moves, he thinks he'll throw up. Maybe fall down. He can't quite meet Don's eyes, but then Don is looking at him steadily, calmly.

Charlie has to go. Has to leave. "Okay," he says, and his shirt is sticking to his back, and his mouth is dry, bitter-tasting. He drank too much tonight, but he's not drunk. He's - everything is terribly clear and Don tilts his head and smiles, and Charlie stays.

When Don asks "You wanna watch the rest of the movie?", he stays.

 

He falls asleep before the movie ends, and Don wakes him up. "Charlie," he says. "Charlie, you want the bed?"

And then he nods or something, and god, he's tired, groggy because he's been catnapping instead of really sleeping, and Don's got his arm around Charlie's shoulder, and Charlie's always going to be smaller, the little brother. But when he leans in a little, and Don shifts his arm so Charlie's head fits just there and Don's hand squeezes his shoulder and Don still smells like Don, laundered-shirts and starch, Charlie never wants to grow up.

He wants to be seventeen again. He wants them to go back to -

And this is something Charlie's never been able to solve. To just before, or just after.

Or during. Assign the events weight, he told Kim that afternoon. Some variables matter more. This one had the weight of a black hole on it.

"Come on, shoes off," Don tells him.

Charlie toes his sneakers off, collapses back on the bed and closes his eyes. "Mm, just leave me here," he says, and it's okay, it's all going to be all right. Don pats his shoulder again, and gets up. The bed shifts and then Charlie stretches his arms, turns his head to feel the cool bedspread under his chin, and god, why does he forget how good things feel when he’s drunk?

Then there's the sound of water running and Don calls "Charlie? You wanna borrow a toothbrush or something?" and Charlie doesn't answer. He wakes up a little and sits up on his elbows. The bathroom door is open, and if Don looked, he'd see Charlie watching.

But Don is brushing his teeth and spitting into the sink, and it's all normal. Don getting ready for bed. Charlie remembers when it was the two of them sharing a bathroom, and Don used to hog the sink, so Charlie learnt to brush his teeth in the shower. Except Don hated it when Charlie spat down the shower drain, so Charlie always had to run to the sink with a mouthful of foam and shove his head under Don's arm to reach the sink and Don would headlock him and he'd spit the foam at Don who'd get really angry then and chase him out of the bathroom.

So he'd be standing in the corridor, buck naked with toothpaste foam dripping out of his mouth, banging on the door and, okay, in hindsight it was possibly cruel. He just remembered it as really funny. Because it was Don.

Charlie watches Don wipe his face dry, folding the washcloth and hanging it back up. Don has his toothbrush in a mug. His mirror is clean, and when Don looks up, there's - well, maybe Charlie's not calculating it right. Maybe the angle is different, or it's some kind of diffracting mirror. Physics is Larry’s strength, and Charlie can see himself in the mirror, hunched up on his elbows, watching his brother from his brother’s bed, and Don cannot see him.

Don can't see him reflected in the mirror because Don pulls his t-shirt off and drops it out of sight behind the bathroom door. Laundry basket, Charlie thinks, because he's still thinking. Then Don looks away from the mirror, and Charlie inhales sharply, stops thinking because Don is unbuckling his belt, sliding it out from the loops of his jeans. There are freckles on his brother's back, which Charlie remembers. A scar near his neck, which he doesn't.

The belt, Don winds around his hand. A neat loop that he puts down next to the sink. His hands flex when he does that, and Charlie has seen his brother aim his gun, the way he drives almost too fast, his hands moving exactly as he wants them to go. It's not pretty, not dancing or graceful, but - Charlie's better at metaphors, but this is almost a metaphor anyway. Don doesn't waste time. Don does exactly what he needs to do. Lowest variables, closest connection.

The bedspread doesn't feel cool under his hands anymore, but hot. Sweaty-damp and Charlie's mouth tastes terrible. Whisky and beer. The other flavours. He didn't brush his teeth, didn't wash his mouth out.

He's thinking about her now, the way her legs parted, one leg bending to rest on his shoulder, the strength of her arms when she leaned back against the wall. He was on his knees, and she seemed impossibly tall and thin. But she was strong, stronger than him in the way she had him pinned down, the way she rose on her toes, dug the back of her heel into his shoulders when he mouthed her through the fabric. She pulled it aside, slipped her fingers into his mouth and he sucked, the edges of her fingernails against his tongue, the tap of her fingertips against the back of his teeth, and then he followed her, to where she touched herself, to the slide of her skin against his mouth, the wet taste of her.

Don unzips his jeans, hooks his fingers at the side and pushes them down. Slowly. He steps out of his jeans, picks them up and shakes them out. Folds them and puts them on top of the belt.

He didn't see Kim undress. They were kissing, and she unbuttoned her shirt, pushed down her pants, undid his. She was fast, and then they were nearly naked, with his t-shirt pulled up around his head and her hands on his shoulders, pushing him down on his knees.

Don is wearing boxers. His back is to Charlie. Charlie can see his own face reflected in the mirror, a shadow of curls and open eyes.

Kim had me on my knees, he should say. He should get up and cross the six feet to his brother's bathroom. Lean on the door and fold his arms and say, "I fucked her." He doesn't swear, doesn't drink, doesn't fuck around. They've never - they've always been good boys. Good brothers.

I had my face buried between her thighs, I licked her, ate her out. I finger-fucked her. She came. Then she pushed me back on the bed and she said "Don doesn't know you're here, does he?" and we fucked again.

He should tell Don that she rolled a condom on him and he wanted to be underneath, that he gave her his wrists and when she pinned him down, when she came down on him and used him, fucked herself on him, she had her eyes closed. That Kim didn't cry afterwards. Just shook, pushed him away when he tried to touch her shoulder.

He thinks of her face, of the way her hair fell down and trailed against his belly, the way she pushed herself forward, and she still had her bra on, and she would have looked like that when she was with Don.

In Albuquerque, which is a stupid name for a stupid city he's never been to. Their mother went, and their father, to visit. Don had sent him birthday cards with New Mexico postmarks, and Charlie never had a reason to go there.

He doesn't have a reason to stay here. He can call a cab, tell Don that he's got a morning meeting, which he probably does. He should go home. Shower, get changed. Sleep in his own bed.

Don pulls his boxers off, steps out of them and drops them behind the bathroom door. For a moment, his back is to Charlie, and then he turns around and Charlie doesn't think the mirror works.

Because Don looks at him, steadily, calmly. Then he closes the bathroom door.

Charlie lies back on the bed. He can hear the shower running. He doesn't think about Don showering from long practice. He runs through the star density equations again, and there's something a little off about the curve of that equation, a shape that isn't quite right. He's tried to explain how he sees it to people who aren't math people, but it's different for them. Different even for his own people. Amita calls it a kind of music and hums when she's working really hard. He's always been tactile. He can feel the shape of the problem in his head, the way it should interlock and fall apart into smoother smaller parts. The smoothness of one part, the tear where it doesn't fit, where it's guessed and forced.

The door opens, and the equations buckle and break. Charlie opens his eyes. Don has a towel wrapped round his waist. His hair's wet and he's not exactly frowning, not exactly smiling. "You're not asleep?"

"Can't," Charlie says. "I was trying to work out a strophoid.”

Don nods. "I gotta be at work by nine tomorrow. You mind the light left on?"

"No, it's okay," he says.

Don nods again. It's like he's going to say something, but Charlie knows he won't. He wants to say something, but Charlie can't tell what he was going to say, only that look that he wanted to.

Then Don turns and opens a drawer, pulls out a pair of pajama pants and his towel comes off, and Charlie's not really watching. He's seen this before. He's used to naked men, to accidental nudity at the sports club, intentional sometimes. It's- he remembers the way Kim leaned back, the lean flank of her side, and then those small breasts just above, the shadowed curve under them, the way when she moved, he could see himself sliding into her, the intersection of their bodies.

And that's distant, like a book he read, a film he watched. Against the swing of a white towel and the curve of Don's back, the count of his vertebrae, the way his legs part when he raises a foot and pulls on the pants, and Charlie sees a shadowed curve, his brother naked.

He has to look away because Don turns around and Charlie can't meet his eyes. He turns on his side, curls up a little, to cover.

Don gets into the bed, under the covers. Charlie can hear the air-conditioner suddenly, the quiet electric hum of it. The bathroom light's still on. Don hates sleeping with the lights out. He used to sneak into Don's room after bedtime so he could keep reading.

"Charlie?"

"Yes," he says. It's not an answer.

"I wish I'd told you about Kim. It was just." Charlie half-turns, and Don isn't looking at him, but up at the celling. "It was a long time ago, and it's over."

"I wasn't dating anyone," Charlie says.

Don looks at him then. "Three years ago? Yeah, I know. Dad worried about you."

"I mean, I was seeing people," Charlie says, and the words are rapid now, and this is something brothers can tell each other. "A lot of people, in fact. But not to bring home for dinner. I just. I didn't want them to worry."

Don's forehead crinkles and then he says carefully, "people?"

Charlie looks up at the ceiling. "Yeah."

It's not - he wasn't compensating or - it wasn't - he's _been_ over this. He was busy and people were interesting, but he didn't want to do that other stuff. Dates, or lunches or walks or going to the movies or whatever. He worked, he went home and played chess with his mother, he went out at night and fucked, he came home and worked.

"Strangers?" Don says. "Charlie, you know you've gotta be safe-"

"I know, Don, I mean, I was. I am." After a while, Charlie says, “You don't. Not with strangers."

Don turns a little, and then they're facing each other. Charlie's on top of the bedcover, Don underneath, but their bodies are curved, almost touching at their toes, their pillows pushed together.

"It'd be easier," Don says. "I'm working with Terry, then Kim turns up. I shouldn't date people in the same field." He grins suddenly and pushes his fist into Charlie's shoulder, playfully. "We should swap," he says. "Amita's really engaged?"

Charlie smiles back. It's not exactly forced. There's a nice logic to it, the transference of pairs.

"I'd warn her off," he says. "She's way too good for you." Then Don smacks his shoulder and Charlie laughs, surprised. This is normal. Don's hand on his shoulder and Don's eyes crinkling at the corners.

"What, I'm a catch," Don says lightly.

"Say your ex-girlfriends," Charlie replies.

"Yeah," says Don and then they don't say anything for a while. His hand is still on Charlie's shoulder. His thumb moves in small circles against Charlie's shirt. "I didn't ask her to move. I guess she kinda knew."

Charlie has a lot of questions he wants to ask. The more data, the easier this would be. He wants to just get a straight answer from Don. But Don doesn't tell Charlie things. He has to figure them out on his own, piece together the details and figure out what's happening. It's the way they've always been, and Charlie doesn't know if Don started doing it to keep Charlie interested, or if Don's always been this way. Everyone else seems to understand Don a lot better than Charlie.

Did you tell her why you moved to New Mexico, he thinks. No, not the right question.

He runs through a half dozen questions in his head and Don's hand stays on his shoulder. It's like a code. He has to say what he isn't allowed to say, and still get the message across.

He raises his hand and covers Don's. Don's thumb stops moving, but he doesn't pull his hand away. Charlie can feel the beat of Don's pulse in the vein under his palm. "Did you tell her?" he asks.

They're lying close enough that he can see himself reflected in Don's pupils. He can smell the toothpaste on Don's breath when he answers. "No," Don says.

He thinks it through, and maybe he understands. “I slept with her tonight," Charlie says finally, and Don inhales sharply and his face creases, and sharpens. His face goes blank, and Charlie can’t stand the look on Don’s face.

"She said, she said we were a lot alike. This afternoon." He feels Don's hand slide out from under his, and Don turns away. Charlie tries to explain. "One part enthusiasm, two parts obsession. She said you had to keep your CDs sorted, that you couldn't stand not knowing where they were."

Don sits up, and the bedspread tugs away from Charlie. "Get out," Don says sharply. "Go home."

"I didn't, I didn't think it would happen like that," Charlie says and falters when Don looks at him.

"You _always_ think," Don says. "We're not - this wasn’t an accident, Charlie.” He pauses, breathes like it’s painful. “I didn't tell her because I wanted her to think I was a good guy, okay?"

Charlie looks at his hands. He had called Terry, asked her where Don was. She asked him to join them for drinks, said his brother had gone home early. He told Dad he was going to meet Don and the others, to celebrate the case closing.

Kim had bought him a beer. They talked about tracking counterfeit circulation, and she told him about some new encryption technology. She had another beer, then switched to small glasses of whisky. Terry gave him a stack of paper napkins to write on, and told Kim to watch out Charlie didn't keep her up too late with math.

Her hotel was on the way, he said. Did she want a lift?

In the taxicab she said "Look, I know this is awkward, but -" and then he'd kissed her. They'd nearly fucked in the back of the cab, except she whispered "Stop, stop, we'll go to my hotel room," and zipped him back up. He kept his hand round her waist, up her jacket, his fingers inside her bra, stroking, rubbing through the lace. She made little breathy sounds and the cab driver ignored them.

Charlie knows he could decode this. The alcohol buzz has worn off, he's just tired. Too tired, and his skin itches, he wants a shower so badly. He wants to go home. "There are no accidents," he agrees quietly.

Don gets out of the bed and looks at him. "I came back here, Charlie," he says. "I left Albuquerque."

"Mom was sick," Charlie says, and he knows he's gotten it wrong because Don's face tightens and he slams his fist against the wall and the sound is soft, muffled by thick plaster and wallpaper, but Charlie flinches anyway. Don only loses his temper with Charlie.

Except Charlie thinks, maybe he lost his temper with Kim. With Terry, with other people. He doesn’t know his brother that well anymore. There’s three years when they weren’t exactly talking, and they’re not kids anymore.

He wasn’t a kid then. He was seventeen, and he thought he knew his brother better than anyone else in the world.

Don is still standing by the bed, looking at him. His mouth is tight, hard. Charlie swings his legs off the bed, his back to him. “I’m going to, I’m going to go home, okay.” He looks around for his socks and finds them, pulls them on and runs a hand through his hair. Don’s arms are folded. Charlie thinks maybe there’s something he could do, something he should do.

“I’ll see you later,” he says and Don nods.

Outside, it’s cold and Charlie bunches his hands into fists, stamps his feet up and down. The street’s mostly empty, and he should call a cab, but he wants to wait. It’s not exactly probable that Don will come down, but he still wants to wait.

But a cab eventually slows down and he has to get in.

 

 **Parallel 2**

“I slept with Don’s ex-girlfriend,” he says to Larry over lunch. Larry’s face scrunches up and he purses his lips in a low, drawn-out whistle.

“Wow,” he says. “That’s pretty. Wow.”

Larry has spent some time working out the quality of sex on a scale, using an equation that balances variety, orgasms, novelty, duration and gives special weight to really good asses. Breasts are excluded, although as far as Charlie knows, Larry prefers women. But there’s a special variable just for asses.

“A 7.3,” Charlie says before Larry can ask. By his own scale, it was only a 4.5, but Larry doesn’t really include the morning-after guilt trips. Then again, Larry doesn’t have an older brother.

“Is she coming back into town?”

“No. And that’s not the point.”

“The repetition of good sex is always to the point, Charles,” says Larry and then he catches up. “Oh. Your brother found out how? Wait, let me guess. You told him.” The look of pity Larry gives him is familiar. Larry believes firmly that Charlie has had sex maybe twice this year, with his sex drive subsumed into work. It’s a theory that works well for Larry, and Charlie doesn’t mind. It’s not like the people he sleeps with are part of his real life.

He’s not sure why he told Larry anyway. The questions he has, they’re locked away in his head and he can’t pull them out just like that. ‘Hey Larry, this friend of mine - it’s not me, no, it’s a student - he told me he had this problem with his brother.’ He could ask his Dad, except he doesn’t want to kill him, and that’s really it.

He thinks he slept with Kim because he thought Don had told her. That maybe he could ask her.

“I finished your equation,” he says instead, and Larry pushes his coffee aside for their notebooks. It’s only later, when they’re walking to their offices that Larry taps his arm and says, “Seriously, Charles. A 7.3? And your brother’s not dating her anymore?”

He’s earnest about this, because he thinks - and Charlie knows most people think the same thing - that Charlie should date someone. Someone nice, someone his Dad would like. Apparently, he liked Kim.

“It’s complicated,” Charlie says and Larry rolls his eyes, annoyed.

“Of course it is, but all love is complex!” Getting sex on a regular basis makes Larry romantic. He’s given Amita a handful of phone numbers from interested physicists. “You should call her. Dinner, a movie. The standard routine.”

“Long hikes in the mountain?” Charlie laughs. “Maybe,” he says.

He goes back to his office and works until nightfall. It’s a good day, his thinking’s clear and at the end of it, he even clears some of his inbox. Most of it to the trash, but still. He gets on his bike and he rides, feeling all right, feeling okay.

Don’s car is in the driveway. His heart starts pounding, and he wheels the bike up the driveway. The car’s parked at an angle, like it was parked in a hurry.

“Dad?” he calls, shrugging his bag off on the couch.

“He went out. Bowling,” Don says, appearing at the kitchen door. “I ordered chinese.”

Charlie pushes his sleeves up, taps his hands against his jeans. “Okay,” he says. “That sounds good.”

“You want a beer?” Don asks after a pause. “I’m gonna watch some TV.”

Charlie doesn’t really drink. He doesn’t do drugs or sleep around. “Yeah,” he says. “Okay.”

They watch a rerun of Star Trek. The local news. The food arrives and Don opens two more bottles of beer, passes one to Charlie. His fingers are cold, from the bottle, Charlie thinks. Their hands don’t linger. They sit on either end of the couch.

“What time’s Dad getting back?” Charlie says when the news ends. The kidnapping got a twenty-second clip, with the artist hugging her husband in front of the cameras.

“Late,” says Don. “He was going for a drink or something.”

CSI starts, and Don picks up the remote and hits mute. Charlie puts the bottle down on the floor next to the couch. He thinks he’s having a panic attack maybe, or he just can’t breathe. If this is what asthma feels like. They thought he’d had asthma when he was little, but it turned out to be pneumonia. He gave it to Don. He can’t breathe and his stomach hurts.

“Charlie,” Don says. “Charlie.”

He makes himself look up.

“I’ve been drinking since five o’clock,” Don says with careful enunciation. “I’m really kind of drunk.”

Charlie swallows and nods, and Don moves closer, so his hands are on the couch next to Charlie’s. Not quite touching, just next to them. Don’s always been braver than him.

“You’re drunk,” Charlie repeats softly. Then Don kisses him, and Charlie opens his mouth and the kiss begins. It doesn’t stop, not really. They break apart to breathe, but it’s the same kiss when Charlie runs his hand down Don’s back, when Don’s hands go into Charlie’s hair, fingers threading through the curls, lifting them from his nape and settling him back against the sofa cushions, Charlie’s head cradled in Don’s hands. The kiss becomes a series of slides, Don’s mouth closed against Charlie’s lower lip, then opening and sliding inside.

He pulls Don’s shirt out from his jeans, slips his hands up under the t-shirt, palms against Don’s back. His brother has broad shoulders, shoulder blades that flex when Charlie runs his fingers down that curve of spine, when Don rises a little to kiss Charlie deeper. Their legs aren’t tangled; Charlie’s half sliding off the couch, Don’s arms keeping him locked there, and he can feel Don’s hips against his, and if he moved just like _that_ , there would be more. But he drags his nails lightly down Don’s back and Don makes a sound low in his throat and Charlie doesn’t need anything more.

They hear the car. The gravel under the tires is noisy when the whole street is quiet. Don pulls back, and his lips are swollen. Charlie didn’t bother to shave today, but Don did, and his face is red. His shirt’s untucked and when he stands up, the jut of his pants shows. “You should, uh, the bathroom maybe?” Charlie says. Don nods. The car door shuts. Charlie sits up. He probably should go too, he thinks, then “Shit!” as he kicks over the half drunk bottle of beer.

Don steps back from the puddle and Charlie stands up, suddenly desperate. “Don’t, I mean -” he says, and grabs for Don’s hand.

The door opens.

 

 **Parallel 3**

In the kitchen, their father empties the ice tray into a teacloth and knots it. “What were you thinking?” he says to Don as he presses the icepack against Charlie’s swollen eye. “You’re really disappointing me, Donald.”

Charlie can’t really see Don from where he’s sitting, with the icepack blocking half his sight. But he winces anyway.

“I slept with Kim,” Charlie says quickly.

His father lifts the icepack for a moment and looks at him. “What did you say?”

“I slept with Kim. Last night. I told Don.” He looks at his feet, but then his father’s hand is under his chin, pushing his head back and the icepack is back on his eye.

He sighs and says “I’m disappointed in you both.” Charlie bites at his lip, then stops because it’s still tender. His eye is throbbing and a painful mix of hot and cold, and his t-shirt is damp at the back with beer where he fell when Don punched him.

“I apologize,” Don says stiffly. “I should not have hit Charlie.”

Their dad pushes the icepack into Charlie’s hand and steps over to Don. Charlie half-turns. The kitchen light is swinging a little, on some breeze through the window. The shadows swing with it, sliding out and vanishing in a steady rhythm. Don’s leaning against the kitchen countertop, with his shirt half-tucked in and his face roughened. He looks like he’s been hit, like he’s been fighting. Their father leans in a little and sniffs. “You’re drunk,” he says. “You’re drunk and Charlie, what the hell were you thinking?” He steps back and spreads his hands, silently asking them. They look away.

“Fine,” he snaps. “I’m going to bed. You two clowns had better work this out. Without hitting each other.”

When the door upstairs has slammed, Don asks “Does it hurt?” Charlie lowers the icepack and tries to blink. It’s hard, but it’s mostly stinging now. Don traces the bruise with his fingertips, and Charlie can’t help shivering. “You’re gonna have a shiner,” Don says. “You always wanted one when you were a kid.”

Charlie can’t help grinning. “Thanks, I guess.”

Then they’re grinning at each other and Don’s hand is on the side of Charlie’s face, his thumb at his cheekbone, rubbing gently and Charlie wants to turn into the touch, to kiss the centre of Don’s palm. But Don slides his hand down so his thumb rests on the swell of Charlie’s lips, and then his thumb nudges inside, past Charlie’s teeth and Charlie closes his eyes and sucks. Don tastes of beerinksalt, the blunt edge of his nail against Charlie’s tongue, and he licks the length of the thumb, the lines of his knuckle, the thin taut stretch where his thumb joins his hand. He’s hungry, somehow, and everything narrows down to this, the rub of his brother’s thumb against his bruised mouth.

Charlie opens his eyes and Don’s watching him, intently. Charlie’s still sitting down, the icepack melting on the kitchen table. He’s just above Don’s belt buckle, and he thinks about how he could slide onto his knees, unzip Don and take him in his mouth. He’s hard, and he knows Don’s hard. The kitchen smells of desire, familiar desire. But he lets Don’s thumb slide around the circle of his mouth one more time and all he wants really, is to keep doing that.

Don draws his hand back, and Charlie wipes his mouth with the back of his own hand.

“I’m gonna head home,” Don says.

“You drank a lot,” Charlie says. “You could. The couch.”

He finds a blanket, another pillow. Walks by their dad’s room, and the light is off, soft snoring. But he doesn’t -, he can’t stay downstairs. Don keeps kissing him, tugging him back, and Charlie keeps going back. They end up in the hallway to the garage, Charlie’s back against the wall, his arms around Don’s neck, kissing. “You have to sleep,” he whispers, “You’ve got work tomorrow.” He kisses Don again, nuzzles under his chin, licks behind his ear, and Don groans and kneads his fingers against Charlie’s shoulders.

“So do you,” Don whispers back. “I’ll call in sick. We’ll call in sick. Go back to my apartment.”

And Charlie can’t help laughing because they never play hooky, they never misbehave. Don grins and his teeth are dazzling white in the gloom. “Seriously,” Charlie says, and he’s seventeen when Don kisses him, and maybe a little drunk too.

“Kiss me again,” Don says, and he’s still gotta be drunk because Don closes his eyes before they kiss, and it’s almost chaste. Closed mouth, soft. Again and Don’s hands ghost up the side of his face, settle on his shoulders. “Charlie,” Don whispers and Charlie closes his eyes and says his name silently, mouthing the words against Don’s shirt.

He goes upstairs to his bedroom. He thinks about locking the door, about leaving it open. He’s only down the hallway from their father. He hesitates, and then he just closes it. He’s too wired to sleep, he thinks as he gets into bed. He can’t even - he doesn’t know what to think, except that his mouth is a thousand times too sensitive and Don is downstairs, and -

Charlie falls asleep almost instantly.

 

 **Parallel 4**

When he wakes up in the morning, Don’s gone. The blanket’s folded on the couch, on top of the pillow. His dad’s making coffee in the kitchen, and he doesn’t say anything to Charlie, just looks at him disappointed. After a second, Charlie remembers the black eye, and touches it carefully.

It really fucking hurts. He doesn’t say this, because if there’s one thing Charlie’s smart enough not to do, it’s swear in front of his parents.

“Charlie,” his dad says when he’s at his bike, about to leave. “Go to the university clinic for your eye, all right?”

He nods and his dad shakes his head and goes back inside the house.

Amita’s in his office and she drops the books she’s carrying when she sees him. “Charlie!” she gasps and he grins. “What happened?”

“The other guy looks worse,” he says, and he can’t help it, he starts laughing. He hasn’t been this happy in god, years. He feels light, like the wind could pick him up and spin him around. It’s a beautiful day, pale sunlight filtering through green leaves outside his office windows, and Amita’s really one of his best friends, incredibly bright and warm and good. Everything is so damn good.

She pulls back a little, then smiles uncertainly. “All right, Professor Eppes. You’re not - is everything all right?”

“Yeah,” he manages. “Just, a helluva night. It wasn’t really anything. I uh, I walked into a door.” She raises an eyebrow and he grins back at her. “A big door,” he says.

Larry comes over after their tutorials are finished, and says “Huh. Remind me not to piss your brother off.”

“Don?” Amita asks, snapping her head up from the pile of papers she’s grading.

“A door, Larry,” Charlie says. “I was maybe a little drunk.” He smiles up at them, looking through his lashes. This makes him look like a teenager, he knows, but it usually works.

“You shouldn’t have told him,” Larry says, shaking his head sadly. “I keep telling you, Charles, all’s fair in love and war.”

“Told him what?” Amita asks quickly.

“Charlie slept with Don’s old girlfriend,” Larry says before Charlie can get a shutup out. “Well, not old, I presume. A few years older though, unless your brother dated teenagers. His ex-girlfriend.”

“Kim?” Amita says, and if Charlie has ever had any reliable fantasies about Amita in the library stack, they’re kind of blown by the amusement on her face. “I wouldn’t have pegged her as his type,” she adds.

“I’m still in the room,” Charlie mutters.

“Sure,” Larry says. “You’re thinking Charles discriminates. He’s very fair-minded.”

“I haven’t slept with you,” Charlie points out.

“I haven’t asked you,” says Larry, not skipping a beat. “You’re a repressed mathematician. Three shots of vodka, and I could have my wicked way with you.”

“Four,” Amita says. “We’re not _that_ easy.”

When the phone rings, Charlie has been reduced to muttering “It was a door” over and over while Larry and Amita work out a way to quantify the sex equation for orgies. Charlie grabs the phone. “Professor Eppes,” he says.

“Charlie.”

It’s Don. He sounds different and it takes Charlie a moment to figure out why. There are background noises, a sort of echo to his brother’s voice. “You’re at a pay-phone?”

“Yeah. It’s - look, Charlie. About last night.”

He can hear Don’s breath, a one-two. “Last night,” he says.

“Yeah. I was kinda drunk.”

Breathe one-two. Charlie’s not really repeating, he knows. He’s stalling. “Drunk. Yeah.”

“I don’t remember, but Dad said I gave you a black eye.”

Don’s voice is maybe, after their father’s, maybe before, the most recognizable voice in the world to him. He’s starting to forget their mother’s voice. They’ve got recordings, but it’s more that he remembers the sweetness of her voice, the memory of it.

“A real shiner,” he says softly. “It’s okay.”

“Yeah, well. I just wanted to say I’m sorry, Charlie.”

“It’s fine,” Charlie says and he touches the bruise so it stings.

Breathe one-two. Then Don says “look, I’ve got to get back to work,” and the phone clicks and Charlie isn’t even listening to a dial tone, just the silence of the phone line.

He puts the phone down. The university line, not his mobile. Don’s always been more careful.

Amita and Larry are waiting, half-turned to him with markers in their hands and smiles that seem to fade. “I’m gonna head over to the clinic, get this checked,” he says, and they nod.

He picks up his bag and leaves the office. There are students everywhere, shoving past him. The clinic’s in a grey squat building that smells of disinfectant, and he can’t find his staff card in his bag, so he has to wait longer. He doesn’t really care.

 

It takes two weeks for the bruising to fade. It gets yellow at the end, and it’s not really noticeable, except when people haven’t seen him for a while. “What the hell happened to you?” Terry asks when Charlie walks into the office.

“Over-enthusiastic door,” he says. “Is Don here?”

“He just had to step out. I’ll fill you in on the case.”

It’s not really complicated; drugs going round that are cut with something new and occasionally lethal. “We think it goes back a couple of months at least. Trouble is, most of the autopsies are recording this as a regular overdose. It’s a lot more intense and it happens faster, so we’ve been able to get recent cases checked for this drug. But we need to find a way to track the historical dispersion,” Terry says.

“You have data on drug deaths going all the way back, right? We need to calculate the probable rate of death without the super-drug, see where it started out.” Charlie flips his notebook round to a clean page. “We could start with this.” Terry leans over his shoulder and he starts writing, relaxed for the first time in weeks. Her hair smells nice, and there’s the quiet conversation of the FBI office, a kind of code he doesn’t quite get, but active, alive, in the way a university isn’t. There’s a thrum to it, he thinks absently, like an engine, a sound-wave to map like this or maybe — and he starts drawing waves alongside the list of sources.

Terry’s hand closes on his pen. “So you’re done, then?”

He gives her a sheepish grin. “Yeah, sorry. Have you got a spare terminal? I can probably get started on the database now.”

He’s working through overdose statistics for the State of California when Don arrives. He hears Terry greet him, then Don’s voice and it’s not quite a punch. It’s just been a while. Don’s working late, his father said when he asked, and Charlie doesn’t really have a reason to call.

“Hey Charlie,” he says.

“Don,” he says and he looks up from the keyboard. Don’s dressed for work, white shirt, tightly knotted tie. A jacket and when he leans against the partition next to Charlie, he can see the holster and the dark gleam of his gun at his hip. “Hey. Long time, no see.”

“How long do you think it’ll take to get some figures?” Don says and Charlie blinks and looks back at the keyboard before he can answer.

It takes a couple of days before Charlie realizes that Don isn’t actually looking at him. At his forehead, his chin, sometimes just to the side. But he doesn’t meet Charlie’s eyes.

The office is emptying, the night shift coming in. Charlie’s working on another iteration of the database, and he doesn’t notice until Terry taps his shoulder. “Make sure you eat,” she says and then she’s gone.

Eat. Food sounds pretty good. It’s not exactly a challenge, but it’s absorbing. He has Amita working on linking in a timeline of gang activities which she’s enjoying. “Murder, auto theft, kidnapping. Better than the Godfather.” He starts gathering his stuff together, pens and pencils, two notebooks and a pile of scrap paper clipped together. A book he thought might help, but didn’t. He could check some other books, but if he goes to the office, he’ll end up clearing his inbox, and he thinks he can still push that off till the weekend. He was going to maybe work on the garden, buy a new heater, but he hasn’t gotten around to it. There’re a lot of things he hasn’t gotten around to. Drafts he needs to go over. Some bills. A speech he’s supposed to give next October, that he should start on.

A lot of shoulds. He should eat. Charlie taps his fingers on the desk, then turns the computer off. He’ll go home. Leftovers in the fridge, or he can order something in.

Don is behind him. Not exactly behind him, a couple of feet back. Charlie still jumps a little, startled. “Don,” he says, and he’s pretty pleased his voice doesn’t break.

Don’s looking over his shoulder. “You heading home, Charlie?”

“Uh, yes. I’ve got maybe half a day left on the database. If you want, I can take it home,” Charlie says. “Get out of your way.”

“That’s, that’s okay,” Don says. “Listen, Charlie, I know I’ve been kind of busy lately. It’s just.” He hesitates.

“You want to go get a drink?” Charlie says as quickly as he can, and Don looks straight at him. They don’t say anything and Charlie thinks maybe everyone in the office is standing up, watching them. Because they must be, they’ve been standing here for so long. Just looking.

“Yeah, okay,” Don says finally. “I’ll drive.”

No-one really notices them leaving. Charlie drops his visitor’s pass off in the lobby, and it’s nothing different from every other time. Don nods at people going by, holds the door for someone coming in. Charlie walks past him, and their arms brush, and it’s a jolt, a painful heady jolt that makes Charlie want to bend over and cough, or curl up or something, but it’s just his brother walking next to him. He puts his hands in his pockets and walks a little further away.

The drive is silent. Charlie thinks they’ll go back to Don’s apartment, or maybe the house. Instead, Don goes onto the highway and winds down the windows. He doesn’t say anything, and Charlie doesn’t either. Just turns his head away and watches the road vanish.

He pulls up in a carpark behind a strip-mall. “Good sushi,” he says, and sushi is Charlie’s favourite. Don takes off his jacket, undoes his tie. He pushes up his sleeves and then he looks over at Charlie. “This okay?” he says, and Charlie can only swallow and nod.

They eat off a conveyor belt, something that never fails to delight Charlie. He’s been to Japan a couple of times. He liked almost everything, the way he was taller there, the endless food shops, the insanely high-tech gadgets in Akihabara. He tells Don about it over dinner, and Don laughs a couple of times, and it’s good. Familiar.

He doesn’t drink the sake, and Don says “I’m driving,” and orders tea.

There’s one thing that Larry believes about Charlie that is true. He’s never been on a date. He’s gone to restaurants with people, talked math until the waiters asked them to leave because they were closing up, and then taken the argument back to a hotel room and sex, but it’s not dating. Those are conferences. Then at university, it’s students, who are off-limits, and faculty, who he really only likes Larry out of. And he doesn’t want to sleep with Larry. Most of the time.

He doesn’t really meet anyone else. He could, but it seems like a lot of time when he could be doing more interesting things. And he found the clubs when he was sixteen, and there were enough of them that would let him past with a university card, not noticing the year. So he’s never really been on a date, the kind where you go for dinner and talk and flirt, and wonder if you’re going to get to second base.

Don snares a piece with salmon roe and puts it on Charlie’s plate. “You like the fish eggs, right?”

“It’s good, thanks,” Charlie says and smiles. “Tell me about New Mexico.”

Don drinks two more cups of tea while he talks. His chopsticks are neatly together on his plate, horizontally aligned. Charlie puts his down the same way, listening and eating at first, then just listening.

Then Don gets to the end of a story about a goat farmer and thirteen tons of fertilizer about to explode, and they’re sitting there, not talking. Just sitting there, watching each other. Don smiles, a real smile, and Charlie says without thinking, “I like this. Dinner, I mean.” He ducks his head, looks up at Don. “Thank you.”

“I gotta use the john,” Don says, and he gets up quickly, knocking the chopsticks off his plate. Charlie bends down to pick them up, but a waiter’s there first and asking if he’d like anything else.

“The bill,” Charlie says.

He pays, and Don’s still in the bathroom, so Charlie goes there. He knocks on the door. “Don?” except then he hears himself calling out to Don, drunk, three weeks ago and he pushes the door open and goes in.

It’s a small bathroom. Two stalls, a urinal. A single wide sink. Don’s washing his hands in it. “Hey, Charlie,” he says, not looking up from the water running over his palms.

“I paid the bill,” Charlie says. “You okay?”

“Too much tea,” Don says.

“Oh.” Charlie rocks back on his heels. “It’s not, I’m not bothering you, am I?”

Then Don leans on his hands and his arms are wet, Charlie notices, his face is wet, like he’s been splashing himself with water, overheated. He speaks so softly Charlie almost can’t hear him. “You’re in the office, it distracts me. You’re not in the office, I’m wondering where you are. What you’re doing.”

Charlie tries to nod, to smile. He’s a problem, he knows he is. He’s always been a problem. “I’m sorry,” he starts to say, but Don just looks at him, and Charlie chokes it back, because Don hates hearing Charlie apologize for being different. For not being normal.

He starts multiplying prime numbers going on to the next prime, then multiplying that again. It's tricky, carrying numbers that long after a while, but it's soothing. He has to concentrate on it, and it's not so hard then to stand in the bathroom of a suburban sushi restaurant and watch his brother look away from him.

Don turns off the tap and walks over to him.

"Hey, hey," Don says with his hand resting on Charlie's shoulder. "Hey, it's going to be okay, Charlie. This was, this was a really bad idea, but it was my idea, okay? This isn't your fault."

Charlie swallows. "Okay," he says and manages a quick smile. "I liked the sushi."

Don's hand stays on his shoulder. "Yeah?" Don says. "It's a good place. I’ve brought a couple of people here, it's quiet." His hand starts to slide down Charlie's shoulder. Not much, just a shift so the cotton of Charlie's t-shirt smoothes as Don's palm passes up and down. It's reassuring, almost. "You should bring a date here."

"Yeah, maybe. I don’t really have the time to date."

"You need to get out more, Charlie," Don says, and his hand moves a little higher with each pass, and his fingers brush the neckline of Charlie's t-shirt. "What about those people you meet up with? Couldn't you ask them out?"

There are several answers Charlie can give. He knows this is a test. He closes his eyes a little so he can think. Just a little, so he can still see Don's face hazily, a little way away. They're against the door, somehow, though Charlie doesn't remember leaning back. The doorknob is cold against his elbow, but he doesn't move. He has to think.

This isn't about the clubs. Or about dates. About dating. He thinks he could say 'I've never actually had a date, Don. This is my first one.' but he's almost certain Don will pull away then, angrier because this isn't - it shouldn't be Charlie's first date. His first date should've been what their parents wanted, someone like Amita, someone sweet and funny and kind and maybe, not his brother.

And Charlie doesn't want Don to pull away. That's all he's certain about. The answer has to keep Don here.

He could say nothing, just slide to his knees and - his mouth is dry, because he can't really think that far ahead. It wouldn't - he knows, with the same sureness that he knew his mother was dying when he first saw her at the hospital, and she looked changed, he knows that if he does that, that Don will let him, that Don will fuck him, and that Don will leave. Because it would break Don.

Don's thumb is stroking Charlie's neck, just under where his stubble starts, and his breath smells of hot japanese tea, and Charlie suddenly knows what he can say. "I paid for dinner.”

Don closes his eyes and Charlie opens his and when Don leans in to kiss him, Charlie lets go of the door and leans into Don.

They sort of stumble and walk to the stall at the end. Charlie can't seem to let go of Don, to stop kissing him, and it takes Don two tries to lock the door, but then it's shut, and Don slides his hands up the back of Charlie's t-shirt, his hands spread over Charlie's thin shoulders, and it's -

When Charlie was little, he had nightmares, but he didn't have the words for them. He remembers being seven, maybe eight, with shaking dreams. The ones where he woke up and knew something bad, something awful was coming for him, and he shook. He couldn't get out of bed to tell anyone, because It was there, waiting. He had to just stay still. Don was thirteen, and he had his own room. Charlie couldn't ask to sleep in his room, because then It would see Don, and Don didn't know that you couldn't move, that you couldn't talk about It, and It would get Don.

He doesn't know how Don knew. Their mother thought it was anxiety over the high school tests he was taking, the new tutor. She checked in on him at night, but he was careful. He stayed absolutely still and pretended he was asleep so It wouldn't go after her too.

Don came into his room one night and said, "Shove over, squirt. I'm gonna sleep here tonight." and Charlie was so tired from the nightmares, from the fear, that he couldn't think of a way to get rid of Don, to keep him safe.

He woke up and it was dark and he was shaking, but then Don woke up too, and wrapped his arms around Charlie and whispered "Hey, hey, it's Don. Hey squirt, it's okay. You're having a bad dream."

You can't see it?" he'd asked.

"I can see everything in this room, Charlie. Everything, I promise you. I’m gonna turn on the light, okay? You trust me, right?"

And he had, he always had, so when Don gathered him up in his arms, because Charlie was a little kid, all bones and brain, and carried him out of the bed, past the thing, the dark patch which was waiting, hungry and silent, in the middle of the room, Charlie held on tight. Don turned the light on, and then It was gone.

"Where was it, Charlie?" and Charlie had pointed to the mark in the carpet and Don put him down next to it and showed Charlie how it was an old coffee stain from when this room was Dad's study, before it was Charlie's room. He held Charlie's hand and turned the light off and they opened the blinds so the streetlights turned it into a faint silvery circle, instead of the dark place.

Then Don carried him back to his bed, and Charlie remembers being little enough that he could wrap his legs around Don's waist when Don carried him, a little kid held safe, and it's like that still, Charlie thinks. Safe. He’s safe now when Don touches him, when Don shifts his legs so Charlie’s between them, Don's body against Charlie's.

They’re kissing messily now. There’s no other word for it. Teeth rubbing, biting, and Don’s mouth is wet, he licks the side of Charlie’s face, and it’s incredibly good. He makes a noise, he must because suddenly Don’s got his face between his hands, and he’s chewing at Charlie’s lip, swallowing his lower lip between his, and his tongue slides down the space between lip and teeth, touches the curve of his gums, and Charlie’s never been big on kissing, never much seen the point except as a way-station to sex, but jesus. He’d forgotten Don knows everything.

Then Don’s hands drop and he’s still kissing Charlie, except his body’s moved back and Charlie chokes back a sound, because he wants Don back up against him, Don pressing around him. Then Don’s fingers nudge in at his belly, tugging at his pants, and Don keeps kissing him, just their mouths moving together, fitting in some weird, improbably way that’s - it shouldn’t work, it doesn’t make sense, their mouths slip apart, and still it works. Don undoes his pants, pushes them down over his hips, hooks his fingers into Charlie’s briefs and tugs them down, and then the heels of his hands are at the bones of his hips, rubbing them, circling, and Charlie can’t help arching. Just three points of contact, he thinks. An isosceles triangle, hip-mouth-hip, and he can’t feel anything except those three points.

Then Don’s hands stroke his side and settle on his waist, and Don lets go of his mouth and sinks down, onto his knees. Charlie can’t move, pants tangled around his knees, and Don’s hands holding him still. It’s just Don breathing, nothing else, just breathing little gusts of warm breath against Charlie’s thighs, Charlie’s - he looks down, and Don looks up, and it’s not real; it can’t be he thinks. He can see himself, and it’s like his body doesn’t exist except where Don is touching.

“Don,” he says desperately. “Don, you’ll still talk to me, won’t you? Tomorrow?”

He can’t breathe and then Don nods, a jerk of his head, and Charlie realizes suddenly that Don’s aroused, that his pants are creased with the jut of Don’s dick, that his brother’s pupils are dilated, blown and his hands are holding on almost too tight, fingertips digging into Charlie’s hips, and maybe it’s not just Charlie.

He raises his hands and it seems to take forever for them to travel from his side to land on Don’s head, for his fingers to thread through Don’s hair and pull him closer.

Then Don’s lips brush the tip of Charlie’s dick, and slowly, slowly, he’s there. Tongue along the side, and he looks at himself, at the tracing of Don’s fingers from the slight curve of his belly to where his pubic hair starts, tight black curls, and Don is licking, sucking the head of Charlie’s dick, his tongue slipping and lapping at the ridge there, while Don’s fingers trace a line, some complex spiral that Charlie can’t map because it ends in Don’s hand curling around his dick, Don’s fingers tightening there and moving so Charlie’s skin shifts and slides. There’s some kind of rhythm, and his hips have picked it up, his legs are shaking and he can’t keep up, because his body’s moving with Don’s tongue, Don’s hand moving him, and it’s so much that his hands stumble down and push Don’s head back, just for a moment.

“I’m going to, I’ll -” he says, and he can barely speak, he’s out of breath and his heart’s hammering.

Don’s face is flushed, like he’s drunk. His mouth is wet, shiny, and he licks his lips and Charlie’s dick jerks a little in reaction and his hips are still moving because his body _wants_. “I want you to,” Don says, and it’s all Charlie can do to nod and then Don’s mouth is back on his dick, he slides in along Don’s tongue, feels the slow, long swallow and he holds on as gently as he can, moves as slowly as he can, but then Don sucks again and Charlie stuffs his hand into his mouth and comes, biting down on his hand so he won’t shout.

He comes and he tries to pull out, and he does, but there’s semen at the corner of Don’s mouth, and when Don stands up and kisses him, the same hungry deep kisses before, this time he tastes salt and sex, not japanese tea. He tastes himself on his brother’s tongue and he wraps himself in his brother’s arms and tries not to shake.

“Don,” he says when he can talk again, when his mouth isn’t burnt dry. “Do you, do you want me to -” and he moves his hand down from the nape of Don’s neck, from where his haircut’s growing in, soft bristles at the hollow, down Don’s back, down to his pants.

Don catches his wrist, his fingers gripping so tightly that this time Charlie does make a sound. “No,” he says. “No.” And he lets go and slides his fingers between Charlie’s, and they’re standing still, holding hands, silent.

After a while, Don unlocks the door and leads Charlie out. They go to the sink and wash up. Charlie’s pants are damp where they fell on the floor, but he untucks his shirt and it’s fine. He runs his hand through his hair, wipes his mouth. He’s fine. Don washes his hands, leans over to the tap and rinses his mouth with a swallow of water, spits.

“Let’s go,” he says. They go, Charlie following Don. He thinks no-one’s watching them, but then again, he’s not looking up from his feet, from Don’s shoes marching in front of him. He’s done some wild things, things he knows would shock his father, maybe not shock him exactly, but the kind of stupidass things you’re supposed to do. Motorbikes and skinny-dipping, drugs a couple of times, sex in backrooms, alleyways.

He’s never been blown in a public bathroom by his brother before.

  
 

 **Parallel 5**

The numbers show no change in death-rate. Nothing that creeps past a 4.5% error rate. Charlie runs through the database again, looking for the mistake. He finds the data on birth-defects and thalidomide usage, plugs them in and the spike shows, climbing cleanly then dropping in 1961. He frowns and hits print for the original demographic spreadsheets.

Terry always has colour markers in an squat vase next to her computer. He steals a handful and spreads them out on an empty conference room’s table. He finds a scrap of paper, weighs it down with a mug of cooling coffee and works out a key. Then he starts colouring.

“You getting bored, Charlie?” David asks. Charlie blinks and looks up. David’s standing behind him with a cup of hot coffee and a box of doughnuts. “We’re going to have a meeting in about five minutes, so I bring offerings. You want one?”

He chooses the rainbow sprinkles.

“What’s this?” David asks, looking at the marked-up papers.

“The data’s wrong,” Charlie says. “Either people aren’t dying, or drug users have suddenly become health conscious or the data’s wrong.”

David snags one of the sheets. It’s striped green and blue, with a couple of numbers circled in pink. Local, federal and dubious. It takes David a minute but when Charlie opens his mouth to speak, David hushes him. “It’s the sources, right?”

Charlie nods. “There are at least two places feeding bad statistics. Maybe more, I haven’t finished. The way the numbers are picked up and mixed, with different models and weights, it makes it harder to spot. Little changes that build up.”

“Deliberately?”

Charlie shakes his head. “Can’t tell yet. They might just be incompetent.”

“How long will it take you to track them all down?”

Charlie pushes up his sleeve to look at his watch. He has a late class at five-thirty, but if he skips lunch - “Can I eat the doughnuts?”

David pushes the box in front of him.

The meeting goes on around him. He answers a couple of questions, but most of the talking just goes over his head. The numbers are falling apart, little cracks where they don’t fit, and it’s enjoyable. Click, click, clack, it all falls down.

“Charlie, we’re done.” Terry’s there, her hair falling over her eyes. She’s really very pretty. She’s got the kind of face that ages well, Charlie thinks. Like their mother’s. He wonders what she looked like when she was in the academy, when she and Don were together. Kim looked young. Charlie’s age. He could probably find out. He could pull up their employment files, or call a friend and ask. He could probably just google them.

“I’ll uh, return the pens,” he says. Terry looks at him a little longer and he holds onto his smile.

“Okay,” she says. Her eyes are green, sea-glass green. “Let me know if you need to talk.”

He finishes the stats, tidies them up into a pile and finds all of her pens, even the ones that rolled off the table, before he realises what she said.

“Why would I need to talk to her?” he asks Don later. They’re at home, with Dad in the kitchen whistling to let them know he’s not listening in, and Don’s picking at the label on a bottle of beer. Charlie’s supposed to be annotating some research a grad student did, but he can’t concentrate. He keeps seeing Terry’s kind face.

“I don’t know, Charlie,” Don says. He drinks and his throat moves when he swallows. His tie is loosened a little, but he hasn’t undone the top button on his shirt, and it’s almost a choke when he drinks. Charlie wants to lean over and undo that button, but he doesn’t. He taps his pen against the table instead.

“Maybe she was being friendly,” Don says blandly and Charlie stares at him. Don stares back and their dad comes out with dinner and catches them.

“What are you two fighting about now?” he asks, then plunks the casserole down on the table and waves his oven-mitt hands at them. “Nevermind, I don’t want to know. Let’s eat.”

After dinner, Don offers to do the dishes with his father, but he pulls out a twenty from his wallet and shoves it at them. “Go buy some ice-cream. Blueberry if they have it. Take your brother with you.”

Charlie feels like he’s being punished. He grabs his jacket and follows Don down the steps.

Don’s back is rigid, and he barely spoke at the table. “Get in,” he says and Charlie belts himself in and knots his hands on his lap.

“Dad thinks we’re fighting again,” he says when they’re almost near the grocery store.

“Good,” says Don. He swings the car into a parking space. “Better than the truth.”

He slams the door when he gets out and Charlie fumbles with the seatbelt and gives up. The engine’s still running, and he’d rather wait in the car.

There’s not much to do in the car though. Run his hands over the seats, flip the radio on and off. He’s restless and the numbers slide away from him, counts trailing off and he’s maybe tired, maybe stressed. He’s been working hard, but it’s not just that. He starts poking through the glove box, looking for something to read beside the street directory, although that’s kinda fun if he starts doing the four colour map problem. Except Don hates it when he draws on his books.

There are condoms in the glove box. At the back, next to a pack of chewing gum, three pencils bounded together with an elastic band and an old pair of sunglasses.

A roll of them, zig-zag folded, and a ragged edge where one’s been torn off. Maybe more than one. The expiry date’s printed in blue, eighty-seven dots arranged in numbers. 2008:05:05.

He takes them out, unrolls them across his lap. The foil crinkles, shades of silver-grey where the streetlight catches the folds. There are twelve. He doesn’t know how many there should be. He gets his from vending machines, a box at the 7-11. Keeps them in his office, because Dad does the laundry sometimes.

He knows Don has sex. He really does know it, but. He wonders if their dad ever cheated on their mother. If she found a business card, or a letter. A condom in his jacket pocket.

He’s carefully pulling the packets apart when Don climbs back in the car. The ragged edge bothered him, and then he kept on separating them. He’s almost finished, just three left tabbed together, and Don’s hand falls on his and he says gently, “Charlie, stop.”

“Did you buy the ice-cream?” he asks, looking out of the window.

“Blueberry. They’re - I was seeing someone here for a while.”

“Terry?”

“No, not Terry.” There’s a soft muffled smack, and Charlie knows that Don’s hitting the steering wheel, and he’s going to start shouting. Don’s never exactly loud. He just somehow manages to shout without raising his voice. “Why the fuck I’m explaining myself to you, I don’t know, Charlie.”

“You don’t have to,” he says, and his words rush out. “I shouldn’t have been looking. It’s your car, your things.” He tries to pick up the condom packets, but now they’re separate, they’re tricky to hold, and one of them falls off his lap, wedges between the seats, and Don swears and hits the steering wheel again.

“Look, just don’t touch anything, okay? Put your hands in your lap and just - sit there.” Then Don leans over and starts fishing the condoms out, and his hands brush against Charlie’s, under them because he’s holding one, the foil corners cutting a little into his palm, and Don pulls his fingers back carefully, takes the packet. When he reaches under the seat for the one Charlie dropped, his head rests on Charlie’s thigh, and there’s -

Charlie strokes the back of his neck, the shaved fuzz there, the clear skin behind Don’s ears, where his hair’s been cropped, cut regulation short. “You got a haircut,” he says, and he feels Don nod.

After a while, Don sighs and lifts his head. Charlie’s hand slips down, into the space between them. “Charlie,” he says. “This isn’t going to work. It can’t.”

And Charlie can’t think of an answer.

 

Dad scoops out ice-cream into mugs and Charlie takes his to the table, but he can’t concentrate on the research with the movie playing. Or maybe it’s the sugar in the ice-cream, the taste of blueberry that isn’t really blueberry. Chemicals tricking his tongue. Don’s watching the news and the volume’s turned low, so it can’t be that.

“I’m gonna go work in the back,” he says and picks up the papers.

Dad waves his spoon at him. “Make sure you go to sleep before dawn, okay, Charlie?”

Don doesn’t say anything.

 

He gets most of the notes done, and then when he’s stretching, yawning because it’s nearly two in the morning, he starts reading one of the blackboards. It’s an old problem, something he already did, but there’s something about it that never quite worked and he thinks, maybe, maybe he can see why. There’s something underneath it, a shape. It’s like diving after sea-monsters; the shapes he sees are hidden by murky green water, and he has to find them, trace the length of their bodies, the curve of their fins, count the jagged teeth.

He’d like his headphones, something to drown out the words in his head, but the shed out the back is close to the road and after a while he can pick up the traffic sounds.

He has part of it, and it’s folding in, tightening and smoothing down to the right proof, to the real structure behind the solution, and when the door opens and shuts, he doesn’t stop writing. There’s chalk dust on his hand, his forearms, smudged on his face. When he licks his lips, he tastes blueberries and chalk.

“Charlie, I talked to Dad.”

The chalk doesn’t exactly fall. He catches it in his other hand.

“I’m going to apply for a transfer.”

He takes a breath and almost coughs. Then he asks “Albuquerque?”

“Somewhere else. Maybe the east coast.”

“You could stay,” Charlie says. He picks up the duster and starts wiping the board, moving it around the equation, the real work, rubbing away everything older. “I thought you liked LA.”

“No - Charlie, will you just stop and listen to me? I’m going to move.”

Charlie picked up the chalk and frowned at the last line he’d written, trying to figure out the thought he’d been following. “San Francisco’s not that far away,” he mumbles as he draws another box, a box inside it, and a line curving between. The chalk’s crumbling, and the lines smudge. “Or San Diego.”

“I’m not coming back, Charlie.”

He wipes the diagram away and tries again.

“I talked to Dad. I told him this thing with Kim, it’s just, it’s not working out.”

He needs new chalk.

Don’s talking about his career, about a position opening in New York, a job in Washington. Charlie can’t really hear him. He’s got the diagram, and there’s a way to describe that curve, to join it to the equation he’s already find that would explain everything. It’s almost there, he just has to think a little more.

“Charlie? Charlie, don’t you do this. Don’t do this,” and then Don is shaking him and Charlie backs away automatically and smudges the chalkboard, numbers against his t-shirt, the sleeves wiping a streak clear where he raised his arms, and he - you don’t do this. You don’t do that to work notes. He shoves Don off angrily, and Don steps back and Charlie’s stepping forward and the chalk’s crumbled in his hand, and when he shoves Don again, he leaves a white handprint on the black of his jacket.

Don’s backed up against the door, and his jacket swings open a little, and he’s got the shoulder holster on, leather wrapped around his chest and back, bulky and black against the clean white of Don’s shirt, and Charlie pushes him again, shoves, and the gun digs into his hand, and he says “You’re not leaving, you’d have gone back to your apartment, you wouldn’t have told me. You wouldn’t be here. You’re not leaving.” He says it over and over, and Don’s mouth tightens and his eyes go hard but he still doesn’t move.

He undoes Don’s tie, and his hands are clumsy and the knot doesn’t work the way it should, the way things should be, but then it slithers to the ground. He undoes the first button and Don swallows and Charlie’s fingers stroke his neck, go inside under the shirt fabric so his hands almost circle Don’s throat. He undoes the next button. The next. Then he bends his head and kisses the side of Don’s mouth, not quite where his lips are. He kisses down his jaw, the side of his neck. He bends a little so he can kiss along his throat, licks the hollow there, and he can feel Don’s pulse against his tongue so he sucks there until it beats faster.

He pushes back Don’s shirt and traces the line of his collarbones with his mouth, and then his hands go down, the hair on Don’s chest soft and curling underneath, and he looks up and says “I’m gonna go on my knees,” and his brother closes his eyes and his back rises, just a little, but enough that Charlie bends when Don grabs his arms.

They’re kissing suddenly, deep hard kisses, and Don shrugs off his jacket, his shirt. His fingers start grappling at Charlie’s t-shirt, tugging it up over his head and they’re moving across the room, slamming back against the blackboard, and Charlie’s breath gets knocked out, stays knocked out because Don doesn’t let him breathe, just keeps pushing, and the gun holster jabs at him, and he can’t help rubbing back. Don’s hand is at the back of his head, and his other hand works at their zippers. Charlie finds the leather of the holster against Don’s skin, bites at it, licks it, and Don makes a strangled sound, so he does it again. Then his pants are down, catching on the blackboard, and Don yanks at them and Charlie makes a sound this time, because Don’s hand lands on his hip, lands with an almost painful sweet smack.

Don’s tongue is at his ear and he jerks because it shouldn’t, it’s invasive almost, but it makes a line tighten from his feet through his dick, to the steady thrust of Don’s tongue, and he lets go of the holster, buries his face against the crook of Don’s shoulder and holds on.

Then Don jacking him off, and Charlie breathes and his brother smells of sweat and dick and leather and he wants to bite the curve of his shoulder, so he does, and Don hisses. He looks at Don, their heads brought together, almost touching, and there’s sweat, little clear beads of sweat on Don’s forehead, and Charlie wants to lick them, so he does. Don closes his eyes and makes that sound again, and Charlie hears it as a moan now, a moan through closed lips.

“Take it off,” he says. “Take it off,” and Don lets go, struggles with the belt buckle and Charlie’s dick is there, in the way, but he can’t stop pushing, he wants to press himself up against Don, to be there already. Don’s belt falls with a jangle, the handcuffs, the keys, and then his pants slide down. Charlie pulls back a little, and then Don takes a breath and he’s still looking at Charlie, and he steps out of his boxers. He unstraps the holster, pushes his shirt off, and they’re naked.

They’re both naked now.

There’s chalk smudged on Don’s face. Charlie’s hands have been wiped clean. He puts them on Don’s shoulders, slides his palms down over his chest, palms against the flat circles of his nipples, then his belly, the scar here, another one there, a healing scrape, and Don’s stomach, and then - he remembers his brother’s body.

He’s changed, softened and hardened. His chest hair’s softer somehow, greyed. His hips feel - they feel narrower, though he knows it’s just that he hadn’t finished growing then, that Don hasn’t really changed. He’s gotten older. There’s still that sound he makes when Charlie runs his hands over his hips, back, when Charlie’s hands are on Don’s ass, and they’re suddenly pulled together, and their bodies fit, they fit. The sound Don makes, Charlie’s never forgotten it. He makes the same sound and Don wraps his arms around Charlie and they rock together, their dicks sliding, and Charlie can feel the muscles moving under his hand, the steady rising rhythm of Don, and it’s all he ever needed, all he ever wanted.

His head hits the blackboard, his knees going weak, and he scrabbles for something to hold on. It’s Don who moves, lifting Charlie’s leg, lifting him so his back’s against the board, he’s at some angle that’s exactly right, some kind of natural balance with Don’s arm under his back, his fingers curling into Charlie’s shoulder and Don’s hand where their bodies meet, the fulcrum. He can’t stop looking, looking at Don’s face, at the join, at Don’s dick sliding against his, the gleam of their dicks, the way Don’s face tightens, tenses. Don never looks away from Charlie.

He has to - he has to move, but then Don leans over, and the balance trips, and Charlie thinks he’s going to fall, except Don picks him up and he’s pinned and Don grinds against him and Charlie has to come, has to groan into Don’s mouth and shake, shake.

“God, god, Charlie,” Don whispers, and his voice is too close, too loud above the rasp of Charlie’s breathing. Then Don’s hand is at his dick, and Charlie almost winces, it’s too much, but Don’s hand goes higher, where Charlie’s come, and Don slicks his hand with ejaculate, and suddenly Charlie’s a little bit higher and he gets it. He gets it and wraps his legs around Don’s waist, his hands scrambling for purchase on the ledge of the blackboard behind him. Don’s hand slides between his ass, his thumb rubbing against the crease of skin, cold and slick and then he’s warm and hot and full, and Charlie pushes.

Don enters. His eyes are half-closed and his arms are straining, the muscles on them standing out, and Charlie thinks he can’t, he doesn’t know if he can - and then it’s okay, it’s done, it’s done again.

Don moves, slides, and Charlie rides it out, and Don is fucking him faster and faster and Charlie knows when Don looks at him, when Don slams him back and pulls his legs higher, further, and it hurts a little and Charlie’s face shows it, but when Don buries his face in Charlie’s neck and comes, Charlie believes it’s going to be okay.

 

 **Parallel 6**

Charlie starts working longer hours. At the university, where he has keys to small rooms that are barely more than cupboards, to dusty storage areas or forgotten library carrels.

He goes home late and works, compiling statistics, extending the database through gang activity and across California and three more states. He drags a desk out to the shed, buys another computer and hooks it up to the house network. “You gonna move in here, Charlie?” his father asks, bringing him another plate of sandwiches when he misses dinner again.

Charlie doesn’t understand, and then his father points to the blankets folded in a corner. “It gets cold,” he says. “I might have to put in heating.”

“Fix the heater in the house first,” his father says, smiling.

The blankets he spreads out on the floor when Don comes in. Sometimes their father knows he’s there, sometimes they come in together, interrupting Charlie’s work, and talking loudly until their father remembers he’s missing the late night show, or he’s halfway through a good book.

He’s pleased his sons are getting along better.

Then Don locks the door, and he pulls Charlie over to him. They kiss and it’s slow, dreamlike. Syrup-thick hazy dreams and Charlie doesn’t know sometimes if they’re kissing fast or slow. When the lights in the house go out, when they’re sure it’s safe, Charlie unfolds the blankets. Don takes the other side. They shake them out, the way they were taught, and lay them down, one, two, three. The floor’s concrete, and the blankets are thin, but after a while, they don’t notice.

In the university, Don comes by with more data, says “Hey, Amita” and asks if he can speak to Charlie for a minute.

It doesn’t happen often; they’re careful.

They go to the places they can lock, where they can hide. Don says quietly, “I need to speak to you somewhere private. It’s to do with the case,” and Charlie nods and leads the way.

When the door shuts, they don’t - there’s no light, no space, no time. They just touch. Sometimes, that’s all Don wants. In the history library, in a carrel with a broken computer, it was late afternoon and the sun filtered through the shutters of the arched windows, through the half-circle of old glass above. The sunlight stained the narrow slice of carpet pale yellow, the wood on the walls deep and rich. Don knelt down and undid Charlie’s laces, pulled his sneakers off. “Stand still,” he ordered, and Charlie did.

He took off Charlie’s socks, then his belt. He took off the shirt he was wearing, folding it and putting it on top of the shoes. He pulled off Charlie’s t-shirt, then his pants, dragging his briefs down with them, lifting his feet to slip them past. He added the folded pants to the pile of Charlie’s clothes.

Sunlight striped on Charlie’s skin and he turned, closing his eyes against the bright flash of the sun at the edge of the window, raised his arms so the warmth slid over them. His skin goosebumped and he shivered, and then Don’s hand was at the small of his back, his fingers tracing his spine. “Stay still,” Don said close by his ear, and Charlie did.

 

Then he finishes the work for the FBI, confirming six data points that have been deliberately tampered with, and Don looks at them, and says “Good, good work, Charlie,” and they’re in the office so he can’t do more than clasp him on the shoulder, but it’s enough, somehow. More than enough, because Terry’s smiling at them, approving.

Charlie goes back to his own office and Amita and Larry corner him, lecture him, and he gives in and agrees to take two seminars and spend a whole Thursday mind-melding with Larry, or what it is that they are actually doing when they sit around his koi pond and talk.

He gets a stack of paperwork done, enjoys the seminar and Larry does have something in what he’s proposing, an idea that could be very elegant. It might unlock another idea in twister-string theory that Charlie’s always wondered about.

It’s Saturday when Don turns up at the house, and they watch the game with their father and then Don stretches out on the couch and starts snoring. Charlie pokes him a couple of times and Don smacks his hand away, then catches it and murmurs, “Stay.”

So Charlie balances his work on top of a cushion and gets lost in that while Don sleeps the afternoon away.

He leaves after dinner; “More work,” he says, but he doesn’t explain, and Charlie stands in the doorway until after the car’s gone out the driveway.

“I thought you finished that case,” his father remarks while Charlie dries the dishes.

“I did,” he says. “Maybe Don’s working on new one.”

On Sunday, Don brings over a box of new data, printouts and diskettes. He carries it to the shed, and puts it down next to the computer. Then he locks the door and somewhere in the twenty minutes, the box gets knocked to the floor and the papers go everywhere while they fuck against the desk.

It’s the case, Charlie thinks. He goes through the data again that evening, and he finds what might be a seventh point of origin, and calls Don to tell him.

“You’re still at the office?” he asks after he’s given him the new information.

“Yeah, the case. It’s - I can’t talk to you about it right now, Charlie, okay.”

He could go over, he thinks. But he knows Don wouldn’t want him turning up at the office, not now when everything’s - changed.

He calls Larry instead and meets him at the arcade where he eats awful popcorn and listens to an idea Larry has about boolean math fields that is completely wrong, but still interesting.

He waits till Tuesday and goes to the office after his last class. It’s seven in the evening, and David’s the only one at his desk. “Hey, Charlie,” he says. “Don and Terry just went to get coffee.”

Charlie runs his knuckles against the partition, a patter of tiny knocks, the sound. “I wanted to check up on the case, the numbers. Don seemed kind of. Not happy with them.”

David shrugs, and it’s an easy fluid movement, the same kind Don makes. Charlie wonders it’s something they teach at Quantico. “The case is going fine, Charlie. Lot of management things right now though, annual reviews, that kind of stuff.”

He nods, and he knows, he never gets any work done in October, nothing really. There’s nothing really to ask about, nothing happening that’s changed.

He waits for them, because he’s not sure if it would be less polite to drop by and leave first, or to stay and then go. Terry raises her cup when she sees him, then veers off to the other side of the office. Don walks straight over, and Charlie’s chest clenches automatically.

“Her Charlie, what’s up?”

And then there’s a minute of trying to explain that it wasn’t anything and David explaining and Don nodding and finally saying, “all right, well, if we need you, we’ll call you.”

And Charlie picks up his bag and nods, and can’t think of anything really to say.

 

They have sex eight times in five days. Faster each time, and Charlie carries condoms in his bag now, a bottle of lubricant, wet wipes. A spare t-shirt. He watches Don get dressed silently and leave the bathroom first. Charlie puts the seat down and rests his head against the wall of the stall. He doesn’t know what to say.

 

Terry calls him, and he’s standing, with the receiver pressed so hard against his ear that it hurts, but he can’t seem to loosen his fingers. “Is Don okay?” he asks.

“He’s fine, Charlie,” she says. “Do you have some time this afternoon to meet me?”

Coffee, at one of the less crowded Starbucks near campus. Charlie locks his bike to the the rack outside and looks through the window. Terry is at the counter, ordering. She’s striking among the crowd of college students. Something about the way she moves, the fitted jacket, tailored, he thinks, to hide the gun, because Don never really takes his off, not on the job, and Charlie can always tell where it is, pressed against Don’s jacket.

He turns around and looks up and down the street. There’s a haze in his mind, and it’s like he can’t think, Flowers-for-Algernon. He knows it’s not really that, it’s stress, it’s everything that’s changed, everything that isn’t really happening. But it’s easier to think his mind’s going, his brain’s slowing down. That he can’t think.

He takes a deep breath and goes into the cafe.

She’s bought him a double espresso with a shot of hazelnut, something he ordered once, months ago when they were working on the bank robbery case. It’s too hot to drink, so he holds the cup to stop from tapping his hands against the table.

“How’s work?” he asks, and she tells him the case is going well, a lot of leads from the data he found for them. He tries not to look at his watch, not to do anything impolite, but he can’t help feeling like - not a suspect, exactly. But it’s like he’s being interviewed, assessed. And he doesn’t know what for.

“Charlie, there’s something going on with Don,” she says after a pause.

He takes a sip of espresso, holds in his mouth where it’s scalding and he can’t say anything. They’re sitting in the couches, the velvet armchairs that Starbucks always has, and Charlie feels like he’s sinking into it, the fabric’s dry and slick, frictionless under his fingers.

“Lately, he’s seemed distracted,” she continues. “Your brother’s one of the best agents I’ve ever worked with, Charlie. He’s smart, disciplined and very professional. But he’s disappearing at odd hours, he’s -” She hesitates, and Charlie can’t help liking her a little more for that. “He’s not acting professionally.”

Then she looks at him and says, “Charlie, I know you’ve been having problems with Don recently. There’s a situation coming up, and I need to know if it’s going to interfere with Don’s judgment.”

“I’m not, I’m not involved with Don,” he says, and it’s stupid, stupid. His tongue is thick, stumbling. “With whatever’s going on.”

Her eyes are measuring and her smile is kind, reassuring. “Charlie, I understand that this is difficult, and it’s private. But I can’t keep covering for Don. If something’s wrong, it’s better for everyone to have it fixed.” She pauses and he watches her mouth because he doesn’t want to look at her eyes. Her lipstick’s almost the same colour as her mouth, only a sheen betraying the careful application. “What we do, Charlie, it’s dangerous. If Don’s not focussed and doing his best, he could get hurt, Charlie.”

He manages to put the cup down on the coffeetable between them before he stands up. He’s sweating and he wants to throw up. “I’m - I don’t feel so well, Terry.”

He knocks into a couple of chairs, but he makes it to the bathroom in time to heave at the sink. He skipped breakfast, and there’s nothing but bile and coffee to spit up, but his stomach keeps heaving, keeps contracting and squeezing, and he thinks maybe he’s going to cough up blood or just die, it hurts so much and he can’t stop thinking about the dead agent outside the bank, the zip closing over his face.

“Charlie?” Terry knocking at the door, and he can’t even stop puking to answer her, to stop her. But she hears something, or she just knows, and she opens the door, because he forgot to lock it, of course he did - that’s what Don, what people like Don and Terry do. Charlie forgets these things.

He forgets that Don carries a gun because he has to use it.

“Charlie, take a deep breath, one - two, good. Do it again. Okay, it’s okay, Charlie. One more deep breath. Good.”

She pulls out a handful of paper towels and runs them under the tap, then starts wiping his face down. It’s brisk, but not quite impersonal. Like his mother almost, when he was sick and had a fever.

“Better?” she asks, and he nods. His diaphragm still hurts, but he can breathe. He kind of wants to burst into tears or maybe just rewind the day, the month, the years. He really badly wants Don to be there right now. He’s an idiot, he thinks.

“It’s my fault,” he tells her. Terry looks at him, her head tilted a little, and he realises she already knew it was him.

He takes a breath, lets it shudder through him. He’s not a very good liar; he knows this. So he learnt, early on, to work around that. He doesn’t lie to people, he just selects what he does say. It’s easy to forget things when you’re not thinking about them, and as long as his emotions match, the details are variables to be assigned however he needs them.

“I slept with Kim. When she was up here.” He looks away from her, because he is ashamed he slept with Kim. He knows why he did it. He knows that fucking Kim wasn’t anything like fucking Don, that Kim - what he did with Kim was cruel. Even if she didn’t know.

“I told Don, and we - he’s angry.”

“You’re seeing Kim?”

He shakes his head. “It was just, when we went out for drinks. That night.”

Terry balls up the paper and throws it in the wastebin. She washes her hands, her reflection looking straight at him, and Charlie’s too tired to think of any more excuses. If she kept asking, if she asked, he’d lie, but he doesn’t think he could fool her. Don’s always being able to catch him out.

“This case we’re working on, it’s become more complicated, Charlie.” She wipes her hands on another napkin, folds it and lets it fall. “I can’t tell you why, and you can’t ask Don. But he needs to focus right now, and if this - if this thing with Kim is interfering, you’re putting him at risk.”

She turns around and crosses her arms, stares straight at him. He tries not to flinch. “You have to fix this, Charlie. I’m going to give you a day, and then I’m going to have to talk the assistant director.”

“Have you talked to Don?” he asks, “I mean, he’s - shouldn’t you talk to Don?”

“I have, Charlie. I wouldn’t -” she spreads her hands and her voice sharpens - “You think I like talking about him behind his back? Something is wrong, and it’s my duty as his partner, his _friend_ to figure it out. He won’t talk. This thing with Kim - just, see if you can fix it.”

He stares at his hands. “Did you know about Kim? I mean, Don and Kim,” he asks, hating himself for asking.

“He didn’t tell me,” she says. “Don doesn’t talk about his private life. The only person I’ve ever really heard him talk about is you.”

“I’ll fix it,” he says, and his stomach is a knot, a weight of stone, and he can’t breathe, but he’s okay, he can move. He just has to do this one thing.

“Good.” Then she does something to her hair, straightens her jacket and leaves. Charlie follows her, but she doesn’t stay in the coffeeshop, just heads straight for the door.

Charlie stands in the middle of the coffeeshop for a long time, until someone recognizes him, a student, and comes up to him to ask softly, “Is everything all right, Professor Eppes? Are you okay?” and he has to nod, and smile and say he was working out an equation.

 

He goes back to his office, and then people come in, and there are deadlines, and suddenly he’s busy, and he can’t get away, can’t call Don (though he tries, ducking into the bathroom and dialing, but his phone goes straight to voicemail, and Don says “Don Eppes, leave a message”, over and over into Charlie’s ear, but Charlie doesn’t know what message to leave.)

He calls the house, and Dad picks up. “Did Don come by?” he asks. “Is he coming over for dinner?”

“No, and no. Charlie, is something wrong? What’s going on?” and then he has to explain that there’s something about the case, but he can’t reach Don on his cell, and his father reminds him that there’s Terry and David working the case too, and reads out their mobile numbers from business cards on the refrigerator door.

Larry drops by on his way to another night hike, as he’s taken to calling them. “Charles! How are things with you?”

Good, he thinks. Good. I’m sleeping with my brother and it’s killing him, probably literally as well as metaphorically. He’ll lose his career, family and friends, and I’ll probably do the same, and I need to fix it, except I can’t think of anyway to fix it. Any ideas?

“Fine,” he says, “Busy, you know the seminar. Next Thursday, I’ve got some students scheduled, so can we meet up later?”

Larry digs around in his bag for his battered planner and writes it down and then he’s gone, in a cloud of aftershave and enthusiasm.

He waits until his office has emptied. It’s after eight. He calls the FBI reception, asks for Don. The work line goes to voice-mail. He calls again, and goes to a different department, asks a favour and gives his security clearance code. It takes a couple of minutes, and then he gets an answer.

He calls a cab, and the driver doesn’t talk, which is good because Charlie doesn’t have anything to say. It’s forty minutes to get there, and he sits in the back of the cab, turning his hands over and over. He’s always used his hands for counting. Base ten, and it’s so elegant, the way it’s built into their bodies. His mother showed him the trick with knuckles and joints to count, and he likes to make the numbers slide bases, to let his hands count out with knocks and turns, to multiply and divide, add and subtract, everything in the tap of a fingernail against another for a thousand, three hundred and forty four to fold into twelve.

He shows his ID at the front and gets a visitor’s pass, a pair of earmuffs and goggles, and directions. It’s quiet, and then when he opens the second door, deafening. He puts on the muffs and walks. Most of the booths are filled, and they look like Don from behind, even the women with that way of standing, the straight set of their shoulders. There’s a jerk when they squeeze the trigger, but they keep pressing, and it’s relentless. None of it forms a pattern; the sounds overlap into random anger.

Don is near the back. His jacket’s off, hung on a hook at the side, and his briefcase is leaning next to it. He’s firing and Charlie doesn’t know if he should make a sound, if Don would even hear him through the muffs, over the noise. He’s got to run out of bullets eventually, he thinks.

There’s a curve to Don’s back, sweat maybe sticking his shirt to the small of his back, and when Don fires, his shoulders move and his muscles flex against the material of his shirt. He fires and Charlie flinches. He keeps firing.

Then he lowers his arms, the gun held to one side, pushing buttons on a screen next to him, and his head turns enough that Charlie can see he’s frowning.

Then he turns a little more- Charlie must have shuffled or maybe Don just knew he was there the whole time, he doesn’t know. He doesn’t know anything anymore, Charlie realises. Don looks at him, and the gun in his hand makes a click, and he’s sliding bullets in and not looking at it. Don’s hands work efficiently, perfectly. This is something he’s done so many times. He loads the gun and he turns his back on Charlie and shoots again.

“Go home, Charlie,” he says when he stops to reload the gun again.

“Terry talked to me,” Charlie says and Don puts the gun down and turns around. His face is completely blank.

“What did you tell her?”

“Kim,” he manages. His throat is dry. “I told her it was about Kim.”

Don nods, sharply. “Good. Go and wait outside.”

Charlie picks up his bag and leaves.

He returns the pass and the muffs, and waits in the reception. He stares at his hands. He doesn’t move. The lights are fluorescent and one of them flickers. His fingernails need to be cut, and he needs a haircut. He’s got bills to pay, he remembers. Utilities and property tax now. His cellular, credit cards. He’s supposed to be doing these things, getting more responsible. He’s nearly thirty. Maths is slipping away, and he thinks with a sickening lurch, that maybe it’s gone. Cause and effect.

Don comes out, glances at him and then signs a book, retrieves an ID card. “Ready?” he says, and Charlie nods and follows him outside.

They drive to Don’s apartment. At the door, Charlie thinks he’s going to be sick again, but it’s different, pressure in his throat, like words have gotten twisted up and knotted, like he has to say so many things, he can’t say anything. Don unlocks his door and flips the lights on. Charlie ducks his head and goes inside.

“You hungry?” Don asks. He’s gone to the bedroom, and Charlie’s followed. He’s taking off his tie, toeing off his shoes. Charlie shoves his hands into his pockets and shakes his head. Don hangs his jacket on a hook, starts unbuttoning his shirt. He’s got an undershirt on, and he leaves that on. He bends and takes off his socks. His handcuffs clatter when he drops them on the nightstand. He takes his gun out, checks it and stows it in the drawer.

He takes his pants off, folds them over the back of a chair. Charlie looks at the tips of his sneakers. They’re wet from walking through a puddle earlier on the way to the car. He needs new shoes, but that means going shopping, and if he waits long enough, their dad’ll buy them for him.

“Charlie,” Don says, and he has to look up because Don’s hand is under his chin, tilting his head back and Don’s looking down at him, his eyes utterly serious. “Take your clothes off.”

He pushes his shirt back off his shoulders, and Don’s hand goes to the nape of his neck, under his curls. His thumb slides under the neck of his t-shirt and Charlie bends to the touch.

It takes a long time, because Don keeps stopping him to kiss, bite, lick, to stroke and touch whatever skin Charlie bares. He feels blinded by the touch, flashes leaving spots on his vision, except it’s numbness almost where Don touches, overloads of sensation leaving burnt out trails on his body.

Then he’s on the bed and Don’s arched over him, pulling his undershirt off, and his shoulders are wide, wide and strong, the kind of arms that Charlie’s always wanted, the kind of strength it takes to keep Don from touching Charlie, from holding himself at arm’s length and then bending, a push-up in slow motion, and kissing him, covering him.

“You’re killing me, Charlie,” Don whispers against his ear, and Charlie moans and moves against him because Don’s hand is stroking his side, cupping his ass, and he _wants_. “I drove to CalSci this morning instead of going to work. Pulled out of the car park and drove back because I was so hard I didn’t think I could see you without fucking you right there.”

He’s turning Charlie around, and Charlie goes, willingly. He can’t speak because Don’s slid his fingers into Charlie’s mouth, and he has to bite, to nip, to lick, because Don shivers when he does that, shivers and presses up against him, and Don murmurs “You’re destroying me,” and Charlie can’t help bucking at that, grinding against his brother.

“Why are you doing this, Charlie?” and then Don’s pushed him down, his face in the pillow and it’s hard to breathe but Don’s kneeing his legs apart, grabbing his shoulder and pulling him back against him, and it’s a moment when Charlie can say something, but he’s too far gone, he realises and when Don’s fingernails dig into his shoulder, when he hears the squirt of lube from the bottle, his dick gets harder and he’s scrabbling at the sheets, begging.

And it’s easy, so easy to rock back, to be there, to have Don pull him up against his thighs, so he can go deeper. To hear Don ask again “Why are you doing this to me?” and Charlie holds on and doesn’t let go.

They sleep, afterwards. Sleep and wake up and fuck again. Charlie showers, shivering in the cold water because Don’s heater is broken, and he hasn’t gotten around to calling the super. He sits on the side of Don’s bed, wrapped in a towel, and Don is awake, drowsing. He’s damp, and Don mumbles “wet, wet, couldn’t you dry yourself off,” and pulls him down, into the crook of his arm and combs Charlie’s curls with his fingers until Charlie falls asleep too.

Music’s playing when he wakes up in the morning, and Charlie can’t place it. Something familiar. He gets out of bed, leaving a tangle of towels and bedsheets behind. He pulls on a pair of briefs, hesitates and then his pants. The bathroom door is shut.

Don is in the kitchen, drinking coffee. He’s dressed, cuff-links to tie, clean-shaven. He takes another mug down and fills it, pushes it across to Charlie.

“What time is it?” Charlie asks. His throat hurts again, like he’s getting the flu.

“Seven forty-six.” Don drains his coffee, walks to the sink and washes the mug, turns it up on the drainer. “You’ve got morning classes?”

“Eleven o’clock.” The coffee’s bitter. Don could never make good coffee. “Terry said that the case had gotten complicated.”

“Yeah, well. It’s my job, Charlie. I’ll deal with it.”

“She said you weren’t - that you weren’t dealing.”

A crash when Don sweeps the draining rack off the counter, when he kicks the nearest chair, sending it smashing into the cabinet doors, and then there’s just a faint clinking sound. A bowl spinning and settling on the floor. Don looks at Charlie. “I’m dealing,” he says flatly. “Don’t talk to Terry.”

Charlie can’t move. “You should get off the case,” he whispers.

“This is my fucking job, Charlie. I don’t tell you how to do yours, so just shut the fuck up, all right?”

The sound the cup makes when it hits the fridge is a small explosion. Charlie didn’t mean, maybe, to throw it so hard. Coffee’s splashed across the wall. Dots on Don’s shirt. He shouts “You’re going to fucking die!” and Don kicks the sink cabinet, busts the door, and then he’s up against Charlie, and pushing him down onto the kitchen table and he’s shaking him, and he’s hard, they’re both hard, and it’s too much.

Charlie can’t stop crying. Can’t stop even when Don gathers him up, holds him against his shirt. Coffee and deodorant, laundry and Don, he breathes it in and sobs it out and Don rocks on his heels, strokes his back and says “Hey, hey, it’s gonna be all right, hey, Charlie, Charlie” and kisses his face, kisses his eyelids, strokes his curls back from his face.

Don takes his hand and leads him back to the bedroom. Sits him down on the bed, smoothes the bedsheets around, pulls the towel off. “Hey, buddy,” he says and Charlie chokes on a laugh, smiles a little, because Charlie was always falling ill when they were kids, and it was always Don who had to keep him company, just like this.

Don gets a fresh shirt, leaves the other one by the sink. He does his tie, buttons his cuffs, and then he sits down on the bed again. Charlie’s tired and his eyes are sore. He remembers there was something he wanted to ask. “The music,” he says. “I know it, don’t I?”

“It was Mom’s,” Don says. “Bach, a cello suite.”

“It’s nice,” Charlie says. He presses his face against the side of Don’s pants, and Don’s hand falls on his hair, strokes his head. “I’m sorry,” Charlie says. “I’m sorry, Don.”

Then Don bends and kisses him on the forehead, once. “Charlie, it’s okay. I’ve figured it out.” And Charlie’s so damn tired, but Don’s looking at him with calm confidence, and if anyone could fix this, it would be Don. “P versus NP, Charlie. It’s unsolvable.”

He doesn’t understand, but Don does, and when Don tells him to go to sleep, he closes his eyes, and he doesn’t hear Don leave.

  
 

 **Parallel 7**

In 1992, Don Eppes walks into a stranger’s house to find his younger brother with dilated eyes, an empty bottle of wine, and two older men who are, Don finds out later, visiting Czechoslovakian math professors, and respected in their fields.

They do not press charges, although Don breaks the applied mathematician's nose, and leaves the group theory man with a concussion.

Charlie is seventeen. He is not a virgin.

 

  
In 2005, Don Eppes walks into a stranger’s house to find boxes of high-grade refined GHB and ecstasy piled on a dining room table. There is no-one else in the room, and Don has a nine-millimeter semi-automatic. He holds it out in front of him in the correct position, and there are twelve bullets, with one more in the chamber.

Terry is at the back door. David is behind her. They have watched this house for four hours and thirty-three minutes, and an off-duty police car rolled up and parked outside twelve minutes ago. They did not need to say anything to each other when the man inside, a high-ranking vice officer, stepped out and went inside the house.

There are at least two men with guns somewhere in this house. They have killed at least three other police officers, and Don does not think they would stop at an FBI agent.

He is wearing a kevlar vest. He wishes he wasn’t.

 

He had been sent to find his younger brother by their mother. He did not want to go. His girlfriend, Alexandria, had finished work early, and they were going to meet for dinner and a movie. Lethal Weapon 3. But his mother asked, and Don called his girlfriend and postponed dinner, and drove from one professor’s house to another.

It was summer. He had just graduated from college, had a new car that he was going to drive across to New York. He wanted to do a master’s program, maybe go to law school. He drove the car with one hand on the wheel, the windows wound down, and Springsteen playing on the radio.

He stops and asks a pretty girl walking by which house is Professor Blein’s, and he parks in the driveway. He’s done this before. He thinks he’ll have to do it again, all summer. Charlie can’t drive, Charlie’s too young, too easily distracted. Don thinks Charlie should learn to call a cab instead of their mother.

He knocks on the door, but no-one answers. There isn’t a bell, so he knocks again. Then he tries the door. It’s unlocked so he goes in, calling “Professor Blein? Charlie?”

 

The first man is in the living room, counting money. His back is to Don. He thinks ‘Now I will shoot him,’ and he sees the blood spraying, brains splattering on the walls. But instead he goes over and clamps his hand over the man’s mouth, presses his gun against the man’s temple and says quietly “If you move, I will shoot.” Then he says the right words, and David is there, with tape and cuffs and Don can move away.

Terry is there and she nods and he nods, and they have always understood each other well. They slept together seven, maybe eight times. Mostly they were just too tired from the training. They would lie in bed and talk, and Terry never asked him what it was like, being the older brother of Charles Eppes. He never told her he had a brother.

 

He climbs the stairs, but he stops calling his brother’s name. He is twenty-two and he has a partial scholarship for baseball. He runs every morning, and he doesn’t smoke, doesn’t do drugs. He had had sex with one other girl before Alexandria, and he thinks he might ask her to marry him. To go with him to New York.

But in this house, Don hears his brother’s voice. There’s someone else laughing, and then Charlie talking, a rush of indistinct words. Then Charlie laughs, and Don is angry, impatient. He could get the late movie, pizza afterwards, if Charlie isn’t a brat, if he doesn’t have to stand around and wait while Charlie explains the universe to people. Don follows the sounds to a room across the hall.

He opens the door.

There are three men, and then he sees two men, and his brother. His brother’s bare feet are in one man’s lap, and he’s only wearing jeans, the top button undone. It’s Charlie because his hair is a mess of curls, even though his face is turned away, raised in a kiss to the other man’s face.

 

He climbs the stairs, with Terry behind and he sees David talking in a low voice on the phone, calling for back-up. They gambled, and they won, and he’s fiercely proud of his people. They don’t know yet who leaked the data, who’s dirty on their side, but they can start looking now. He reaches the landing and he holds his gun to the side, looks.

Empty. He turns. There is a hallway and three doors. He needs to choose. One door has a detective with sixteen years of excellent service, fourteen million in cash and a drug habit. He points to the first one and Terry nods. He takes the second. They count. They break the doors down.

Nothing.

Then he turns, and it’s exactly like he hoped it would be, it’s perfect. It’s everything flashing to the surface, everything revealed.

Terry turns, and she was expecting this, but not the way Don was, and he pushes in front of her, and the gun fires and -

 

In 1992, Don Eppes drives his younger brother to a motel on the outskirts of town. His brother is still pliable and sweet with wine and drugs. Pot, nothing worse, but he doesn’t want their mother to see Charlie like this. He rents a room key and uses the payphone while Charlie curls up on the car seat, still not wearing a t-shirt. There’s blood drying on Don’s knuckles.

He tells his mother that he’s taking Charlie to the movies. They’ll be home late.

He wakes Charlie up, and the clouds break a little when Charlie climbs out of the car, and the sunlight gilds Charlie’s body, and Don shoves his hands in his pockets and snaps at his brother to hurry the fuck up.

He does not remember to call his girlfriend.

The motel room is clean and small. There’s a queen bed, but they’re only going to be here overnight, until Charlie’s back to normal. He locks the door, slips the key into his jacket, hangs the jacket on a hook behind the door.

Charlie lies down on the bed. His jeans ride down, and there are curls, dark tight curls of hair, above his fly.

“You need a shower,” Don tells his brother.

“I’m all right,” Charlie says, and he stretches his arms out on the motel bedspread and his eyes flutter closed and his hips arch slightly and Don does not stop looking.

Charlie was always twelve. Always with too long curls and a nose he couldn’t grow into, long awkward legs and arms. He used to call him spiderboy until Charlie would cry. Then when Don wasn’t looking, when he was trying to keep his place on the baseball team, his grades, the Dean’s list, Alexandria - Charlie turned seventeen.

It happened that summer. He grew two and three-quarter inches, although Charlie preferred the metric system. He stole Don’s favourite t-shirts, then Don’s old jeans, and Don complained to their mother, but she just gave him money to buy new ones.

He doesn’t know if those are his jeans, the ones that Charlie’s not really wearing. He doesn’t recognize this brother. Charlie has stubble, a shadow across his jaw, a darkness when he tilts his head and his throat is one long line. His body has filled out, and it’s unfamiliar. He remembers Charlie as pale and skinny, a weedy kid, but this boy is someone else, olive skinned and muscled. Beautiful.

“Charlie?” Don asks, and the stranger on the bed looks at him and says his name.

They don’t leave the motel until ten-thirty-one the next morning, and they are silent on the drive back to their parents’ house. Don drops his brother off, then goes to his girlfriend’s apartment and breaks up with her. He leaves for New York that evening.

  
 

In 2005, Terry is shouting “Agent down! Agent down!” and she leans over him, pressing her hand down, and it hurts like a sonovabitch, and he tries to tell her to stop, but he can’t.

He can’t stop.

 

 **Parallel 8**

He wakes up because his cellular keeps beeping. It’s Amita, and he’s supposed to be supervising her class today, a new course, where exactly is he? “I’m at Don’s,” he says without thinking, but she just tells him to hurry and hangs up.

He calls a cab, and tries to brush his teeth while getting dressed, which he mostly manages. He doesn’t go into the kitchen.

His bag’s still in the hallway, and he grabs it and sprints down the stairs, and it’s late, he’s late, but the driver promises a shortcut, and Charlie digs out his cell and apologises again to Amita.

Outside the lecture hall, he tells her “Coffee. Just let me get some coffee, and I’ll do anything.”

She frowns at him, then shoves a cup of vending machine coffee in his hand. Her punishment and forgiveness in one papercup of vile hot liquid. He downs it like a shot and then he’s ready.

 

When his father comes into the office, Charlie thinks it’s lunchtime, that he’s forgotten they were going to meet for lunch. Then he remembers he had lunch with Larry today, and he doesn’t know why his father is there.

“Dad?” he says.

This is the last thing Charlie remembers. That his father looked at him and said nothing, and for once, Charlie didn’t need an explanation, answers. He knew.

 

“Mr Eppes,” Terry says when she sees them, and she goes straight to his father and hugs him. She’s got blood on her shirt, a spatter that ends at her collar, and her make-up’s all scrubbed off. The blood’s dried, because none of it’s left on his father’s shirt when Terry pulls back, her hands firm on his father’s shoulders.

“He’s out of surgery, but he hasn’t come round yet. They said it was straightforward, no major damage.” Her sleeves are soaked in blood, dried to rusty stains. It’s almost pretty, the curves and streaks where the red has climbed up the cloth. There are spaces where the white cloth shows through, and Charlie counts them and realises she had her cuffs rolled up before. During.

“Can we see him?” Dad asks.

Charlie reads the numbers on the doors they walk past so he can find his way here again. Don’s in room 168, and he tries to think of something about that number, but it’s nothing, nothing special. It’s a number and the door opens and Terry brings his father in, and the door almost swings shut on him before Charlie remembers to put out his hand and follow them.

Don’s asleep. There are machines, tubes, monitors. Bandages on his neck, and his hands are turned palm up on the blankets, his face is blank.

“Donnie,” and his father bends over, and kisses his son on the forehead, touches his face with tender hands, and Charlie’s face burns, he’s cold and hot, shaking and he has to go, now.

He runs down the stairs, slams his feet on the concrete treads and pushes a side door, bends over and pants, breathing in air, huge mouthfuls of air, but it’s not enough, and he’s throwing up again, the world spinning down to dizzying black spots. He thinks he’s going to die, he wants to die, but it’s only a panic attack.

“Here.” He looks up and Terry’s got a paper bag and a cup of water. He tries to thank her, but settles for wheezing into the bag instead. When he can straighten, he drinks the water. There’s a metallic tang to it, and he realises he’s bitten his tongue. It kinda hurts.

“Charlie,” Terry says, sitting down next to him on the bench. “I want you to know that I have a gun. I actually have two guns right now, because I have your brother’s gun. I also know a lot of ways to kill you without using a gun.”

She leans a little so he can see her face, and her hair, honey-wheat and sunlit, swings down. He can smell shampoo and blood. “I could just hurt you very badly, but without permanent injury. Do you understand?”

He nods.

“Don stepped in front of me. I might have been hit too, but he stepped in front. Do you understand?”

He nods and doesn’t look away. “He stepped in front,” he whispers.

“A fraction to the right, another bullet,” she says and her voice is relentless, soft and pleasant but relentless, “and he would have bled out at the scene. He lost a lot of blood, and he’s got another bullet in his leg, and he almost died.“

She puts her hand on his arm, and her fingers are cold and tight. “He almost died, Charlie. Do you understand?”

“Does,” he clears his throat, “Does anyone else know?”

Terry studies his face for a while and then she says “Just us. The shooter’s dead, and David was downstairs when it happened. But Charlie, I’m going to be asked for a full report.”

“You want to know why,” he says and he looks away now because the secret, the terrible secrets are on his face, and Terry is like a searchlight, a blinding flash that strips away the silence he’s grown used to.

“He loves you,” she says and he flinches. “This thing with Kim, maybe you could work it out.”

“A long time ago,” he says, looking at the ground, “I did something terrible. And Don was there. He thinks it’s his fault, that he did it, but it was me. I always knew what I was doing. I just - we never talked about it. And,”

“You did it again.” He nods. “He covered for you.” He nods.

She doesn’t let go of his arm. “Charlie, I have to know. Is it, did you hurt someone? I can help you, Charlie.” Her voice gentles and she’s looking at him with intense sympathy, so unexpected that he doesn’t understand what she means at first.

“No, not. No-one else,” he says, and she nods fractionally. “It’s not, it’s not something wrong. Not exactly. But Don -”

“Don thinks it is.”

“I should leave,” Charlie says. “I can move. Princeton would hire me, or maybe I could go to England. Travel. Dad’ll take care of the house. I need to leave.”

“Whoah, okay,” she says. “We’ll talk about this, okay? Come on, your dad’s going to be worrying about you.”

She steers him through the lobby, up the lifts and back to Don’s room. There’s a doctor talking to their father and Terry listens, nodding and starts discussing insurance paperwork with Dad. So Charlie goes over to the bed, and Don’s turned his head, burrowing into the pillow. His forehead’s creased and his eyes shift under their lids. Dreaming, and Charlie wants to know what, wants to be able to lean down and smooth Don’s forehead, the way Dad could, to be able to touch him to know he’s alive, he’s really still alive, but he can’t.

He grips the rails of the bed and watches his brother sleep.

 

 **Parallel 9**

He can’t work on P vs NP, because he can’t solve it, and suddenly he needs to be able to solve things.

He visits their mother’s grave, and talks to her. He can’t bring himself to tell her, because Don wouldn’t want her to know. But he apologises anyway.

In the car, driving back, his father says “Charlie, it wasn’t your fault,” and Charlie shakes his head mutely.

He doesn’t go back to the hospital since the first day, Terry drove by the house and came out to the garage where he was working, and stood where Don used to stand, only with the door left open so light followed her in, framing her silhouette so he couldn’t see her face almost. “He’s awake,” she said. “He wanted to know if you were all right.”

Charlie crosses his arms, uncrosses them. “I am,” he says. “I’m fine.”

Terry nods. “Are you going to visit him?”

“I don’t, no. I don’t think so. I’ve got a lot of work to do.”

“Good,” she says. “That’s good.” And then she leaves and Charlie goes back to his work.

 

It’s been nine days, and Don is getting discharged. His leg is mending well, and they had a scare with an infection, but he’s fine, their father says. Charlie nods. “Do you want to come along? See your brother?” he asks.

Charlie finishes making his lunch, sandwiches and a glass of milk. “No,” he says. “I’ve got a lot of work to do.”

He can feel his father’s gaze on him when he leaves the kitchen, and it’s heavy. But Charlie’s getting used to it.

 

It’s two weeks and six days, when he’s working late and Amita drops by on her way home and ends up staying past midnight helping him. He buys her a bottle of Coke from the vending machine, a packet of M&Ms to share, and she knocks them back with a smile, and the screen lights up her face, and Charlie leans over and kisses her.

She tastes of Coke and lipbalm and she kisses him back, and her hair’s soft under his hand, and it’s really good. It’s good.

But then she pulls away, frowning. “Charlie,” she says. “I like you, a lot. But I’m kind of seeing Don.”

He thinks she’s talking about the thesis-advisor, student-professor part, and he’s always had a pretty good argument, but he forgets it when she says his brother’s name again.

“You’re seeing - you and Don?”

She nods, and Charlie never would have - Don likes women with straight hair, career women.

“After the accident,” she says, “I went by the hospital, and we were just talking, and I guess I asked him out. Or he asked me. It’s only been a couple of dates, but I really like him, Charlie.” She bites her lower lip, and she’s really pretty, and that was one thing Don liked. “I thought you knew.”

“We’re not, we’re not talking so much,” he says.

She sighs, and then she stands up, picks up her books and her bag. “I should go now. Listen, Charlie, nothing’s changed, okay? We’re still, this isn’t going to change things, right?”

“Of course it won’t,” he says and smiles and waves until she’s gone, and then he sits down, closes the computer and lays his head down and tries not to breathe.

 

It’s three months and a week to the Thursday that Don was shot. Charlie comes home and Amita’s in the kitchen mixing a salad with their father. Don’s going through the fridge and comes out with two beers. He sees Charlie and goes back in for a third.

“Charlie!” Amita says and she smiles and tilts the bowl for him to see. “Cucumbers and yogurt, my mother sent me the recipe. You’ll love it.”

Don opens the beer bottle and puts it on the table. Charlie picks it up but doesn’t drink. “It looks - are those pine nuts?” he asks, and Amita grins and spoons out some for him.

It’s just after eleven when Don and Amita leave, and Charlie does the dishes. His father helps to dry, but he doesn’t say anything about Amita to him, just talks about his day at the soup kitchen.

After midnight, he has a shower and gets changed. He finds a couple of hundred dollars in his sock drawer and slips it into his pocket. It takes twenty minutes for the cab to arrive, but he doesn’t mind. He walks for a while and meets it down the road.

San Diego and it’s a Saturday night and the cab slows to a crawl and he walks the rest of the way. They stamp his hand and he goes to the bar and does a shot, then another one.

“You thirsty tonight?” someone shouts, and it’s a woman with short spiked hair and gorgeous blue eyes, outlined in smokey grey powder. She buys him another drink and he thanks her, and then they’re dancing, and she has a friend who knows a guy, and Charlie pays twenty for some E, and the music kicks up a beat. The music starts to work, and the woman laughs and he’s smiling, he’s dancing.

They make out, but he keeps getting distracted and then there’s a friend of hers turns up, a girl with long red hair and Charlie starts stroking it, but the girls start making out with each other, and he wanders off.

He buys another bottle of water and someone splashes the rest of theirs on his face and he laughs because it’s so cold. He shakes his head, and drops spin off, and the guy with the empty bottle grins and they start to dance.

“Bathroom,” the guy shouts in his ear and he’s tall and good looking, blond with a buzz cut that’s soft when Charlie touches it.

“Yeah,” he agrees, and they go and it’s familiar, and wonderful and Charlie goes on his knees and the guy pulls him up afterwards and Charlie comes with a sigh and then they wipe their hands off and the guy sticks his hand out and says “I’m George.”

“Charlie,” he says. “Nice to meet you.”

 

Things settle into a pattern. Don brings Amita over for dinner some Saturdays. They have lunch together on Monday, and Amita tells him once that his brother is “just pretty amazing. But you know that, Charlie,” and he smiles. He spends Thursday afternoons with Larry working on his research, and on Tuesday, Wednesday, Friday and Saturday nights, he goes out and finds someone and it’s really the same routine he had for seven years, just with Saturday dinners once in a while.

Larry’s research is going well, and Charlie sleeps with George again, drives down to San Diego and skips the club to go straight to his apartment and fuck. He still doesn’t give George his number, but George doesn’t ask. They don’t talk much, but they dance sometimes, and Charlie borrows a t-shirt when he gets his wet.

He’s halfway through a lecture when he realises he’s wearing Don’s old jacket over George’s borrowed t-shirt, and it’s so funny he starts laughing, and the students look at him like he’s crazy, not just eccentric. But he covers, spinning them an anecdote about Feynman, and at the end of the lecture, he leaves Don’s jacket behind on a chair.

“I’m glad you boys have worked this out,” his father says one day. Amita’s watching the ballgame with Don in the living room, and Charlie’s helping to make dip, or really just hanging out in the kitchen, restless. It’s Thursday, and he’s thinking maybe he’ll go out tonight as well. A bar downtown.

“Yeah,” Charlie says. “We worked it out.”

 

 **Parallel 10**

It’s Tuesday, and he almost decides not to go but he’s too wired up to sleep. It’s a warm, almost sultry night and he pushes his sleeves up, undoes a button and that’s better. His pace picks up and he goes into the bar, looking for someone, someone fast.

It’s a good bar for this, intent and serious. You’re either here to drink, sitting on a bar stool and ignoring everyone else, or you’re here to cruise. Mostly women, a couple of men that look at him twice, and Charlie orders a beer and wanders over to watch the pool game being played.

“It’s not exactly a sport, is it? More like a geometry competition,” a woman in a low-cut tank says, and Charlie blinks and buys her a drink.

Her name’s Mickey, she says and she flunked college maths, but she beats him at pool, and it’s not just because everytime she leans over to line up a shot, her breasts curve deliciously, and Charlie wants to slide his hands into that cleavage, to see if they’re as soft as they look.

“You want some coffee? I make a great cup,” she offers and Charlie grins and grabs his jacket.

She lives around the corner, she says, and it’s up two flights of stairs and a tiny dingy flat, but she pulls off her top and her breasts really are that gorgeous.

“Get undressed,” she says. “I’ll get us something to drink.”

She’s back before he can get his jeans off, with two cups of clear sparkling soda. He kisses her and she melts against him, her breasts at just the right height for him to bend and lick, to suck and she shivers, and it’s good to hear her moan.

“Not so fast,” she murmurs and Charlie lets go. She’s smiling still and she hands him a cup and they clink their cups and drink.

Then he leans over to kiss her, and she leans back so he misses her mouth but he’s at her breasts again, and really, that’s fine by him. They sink down onto the couch and she wraps her legs around him and then — everything starts to fade and Charlie looks up at her and she smiles at him and whispers “Sleep, Charlie. Sleep.”

 

He wakes up with a split lip and sore ribs. It hurts to breathe, a sharp jab when he even moves, so he stays curled over. He can’t move much anyway. His hands are tied behind his back and his ankles are in shackles.

“Charlie Eppes,” someone says and he looks up. A man in his mid-forties, with greying hair and sunglasses, is looking down at him. “Your brother’s Don Eppes, right? FBI agent, transferred here from New Mexico three years ago?”

He nods and his throat is incredibly dry. He doesn’t think he can talk.

“Good,” the man says and drags Charlie up by his shoulder, which hurts really badly, hurts so much that Charlie starts to black out. “Wouldn’t want to have picked up the wrong guy.”

Then his hand comes down on Charlie’s shoulder and wrenches and it hurts so badly he almost doesn’t feel the knife slicing across his scalp, until the blood drips down to his eyes.

The man lets go and steps back and he’s got a ziploc bag and a chunk of something bloody and matted that he drops in. “Let’s hope your brother likes you, Charlie.”

The door closes behind the man and Charlie hears another lock and another, but he’s having trouble concentrating because the blood’s dripping down to his chin now, into his mouth. His shoulder’s throbbing, but it’s not intense, so he manages to roll over, kneeling as far as the shackles will let him, and press the cut against the wall. It hurts, but he grits his teeth and stays still until the bleeding stops.

When he pulls away, the cut opens again, but it stops bleeding after a while and he can mostly see. He looks around, and it’s a bare room, one lightbulb in the centre of the ceiling, no windows, one door. The shackles are drilled into the wall, and they could probably be pulled out, except Charlie’s not really sure how to do that without maybe heavy machinery. His hands are a little numb, prickling when he wiggles them. He’s wearing his briefs, and that’s it.

The door stays shut. Charlie closes his eyes and waits.

 

The man comes back with a polaroid camera and the knife. He holds the camera in one hand and the knife in the other, and Charlie can’t even swallow because he’s so thirsty.

“You know who I am?” he asks, and he pulls his sunglasses down a little. He has blue eyes, crinkles at the corners. He smells of beer and soap. Charlie shakes his head. “I’m the brother of Samuel Zedes. Your brother killed my brother, and where I come from, well. An eye for an eye.”

His knife is suddenly out, at the side of Charlie’s face, the tip so close that when he blinks, his eyelashes brush the blade. “Smile for the camera,” he says and draws the tip down, a narrow line that breaks and bleeds down Charlie’s face.

The camera flashes and Charlie says “Please, whatever this is about, please can we talk about it?” But Zedes kicks him right where his ribs hurt and when he can move again, the door’s shut.

 

It’s a long time until Zedes comes back, but he’s got a plastic bottle of water and a bucket. “You can wash yourself with this, up to you.”

“My hands are tied,” Charlie says. “I promise I won’t try to escape.”

Zedes turns him around and slices the duct tape. “You try to move,” he warns, “I’ll take out one of your eyes.”

Charlie drinks most of the water, washes some of the grime on the cuts. He stinks, and he looks at the bucket with dread, but it’s all he’s got.

Zedes knocks this time, and Charlie tries to remember what he’s supposed to say. Don and Terry talked about this once, after a case. The do’s and don’ts of smart kidnappings. But all he can think about is the welding torch and a plastic bag forced over his face.

“Up against the wall,” Zedes says, and Charlie tries to stand up and do it, but his legs are trembling and he stumbles. Then Zedes on him, kicking at his ribs, his kidneys and he curls in on himself, but the man grabs his hair and bangs his head back against the wall, and Zedes is grinning, delighted. The camera flashes and a poloroid slides out.

“Good job,” Zedes says and he shows him the poloroid, Charlie’s ghost slowly appearing, pale with yellow and red splotches, battered. “Pretty as a picture,” Zedes says. “My brother looked like hamburger meat when they were done with him. Seven bullets. Blew his brains out, smashed his chest open. I heard your brother got shot recently, but it didn’t do the trick.” He claps Charlie on the shoulder and smiles. “Well, back to work. See you tomorrow.”

 

It’s the third day then, when Zedes appears. He’s in a good mood and Charlie thanks him for the water. He’s so hungry he’s been licking the blood off his face, but when he asks if he can have something to eat, Zedes slaps him, hard enough to set his ears ringing, and his good mood seems gone until the poloroid develops and Charlie’s broken nose is clear, the trickle of blood on his face bright and red on the film.

He tells Charlie that his brother was nineteen and doing him a favour. Carrying a little heroin, nothing much, and of course he had some personal protection, but he was just a kid and the FBI agents shot him down like he was an animal. Roadkill.

Charlie works through the variables. He’s feverish, which means an infection because when he touches the gash on his head, there’s pus and he’s pretty sure that’s not good. His ribs are starting to hurt more, even though Zedes stopped kicking him there.

He’s seen Zedes’ face. He knows his name. Zedes’ baby brother is dead.

Charlie thinks it’s not much better than dying in a duel. At least Galois had a chance to write down some of his ideas before he died.

He could write them in blood, he thinks. Scrawl on the walls or paint his body.

 

On the fourth day, Zedes brings in a lighter and a piece off wire, and he doesn’t photograph Charlie’s face.

On the fifth day, his face is raw, and his fingernails are ragged, with blood and skin under them. He’s thirsty all the time now, and so hungry. He could last twenty-eight days without food, but he’s always been skinny, and his body’s burning up with fever. A week, he thinks.

Charlie keeps his eyes closed in the photograph on the fifth day, and hopes.

When the door closes, his hand goes back to his face and he counts the scratches again, twenty-six, including the one Zedes gave him the first day.

 

He thinks it’s Don on the sixth day, stroking his hair, then slapping him awake.

When he was twenty-three, Don got transferred to New Mexico, and he came back to California for a week. Charlie hadn’t seen him in fifteen months, and Don clapped him on the shoulder and said “Hey, buddy, how’ve you been?” like the last time hadn’t been in the hotel room in New York, where Charlie was supposed to be presenting a paper and their mother begged Don to at least go talk to his brother, and they ended up fucking, and Don left in the middle of the night and wouldn’t open his apartment door when Charlie followed.

He got lost in Brooklyn, but someone picked him up anyway, and gave him twenty bucks after a blowjob, which technically, Charlie guesses, means he was paid, but he was able to get a cab back to the hotel in time for a shower before the lunch conference.

“Don?” he says. “Don, is that you? I’m so sorry. I’m sorry I screwed up.” Don’s drunk, sourmash or something unfamiliar, because Don’s usually just a couple of beers. But Don says “It’s okay, buddy, it’s okay,” and Charlie feels better.

“Don’t go to New Mexico,” he says. “We’ll stop. Don’t go. Please, Don.”

Then someone’s lifting him up and a bright light flashes and he opens his eyes, and it’s Zedes, but the man won’t look at him, and Charlie remembers that he lost his brother too, and he asks “Do you miss him?”

Zedes nods. Charlie slides back down onto the floor. He’s getting too tired to move much now. “Don left me when I was twenty-three,” he says. He doesn’t know why he’s telling Zedes this, but he’s dying and he guesses that’s as good a time to talk as any. “He moved to New Mexico and we didn’t talk for three years.” He looks at Zedes. “I missed him so much.”

“He’s looking for you,” Zedes says after a while. “He won’t find you in time, but he’s looking.”

Charlie nods. “Thank you,” he says. “I’m sorry about your brother.” He means it.

 

 **Parallel 11**

He wakes up to a gunshot. He thinks maybe it’s him, and that he’s dying slowly, but the pain doesn’t get worse. It doesn’t get better though, and he tries to see if he’s bleeding anywhere. The light’s off, and the room’s almost completely dark, so he has to rely on touch. He’s damp, sticky sweat damp, but no blood, he thinks.

Zedes would be inside to shoot him, Charlie thinks. So if Zedes is not inside the room, he must be outside. Zedes has shot someone.

Or: someone has shot Zedes.

Another shot and it’s loud and clear, but he tried screaming the first day, and no-one heard him, so no-one will hear this shot. Maybe Zedes is target-shooting. Maybe he’s shooting someone else.

Then something smashes into the door, again and again, and Charlie tries to hide in the corner, to hide from the battering smashing anger on the other side.

The door breaks; a rectangle of light and a silhouette fall on the floor and he’s almost all right about dying this way. He didn’t want to starve to death, and a gunshot. It’s fast, he thinks, and closes his eyes. It’s fast.

“No, oh god, no,” and there’s another gunshot, and Charlie can’t help jerking because it’s still going to hurt, dying.

“Charlie! Charlie, talk to me, Charlie,” and he works through what that means and opens his eyes again.

“Don?”

“Hey, Charlie,” and it’s Don next to him, Don, holstering his gun, kneeling down next to him.” Don lifts him up, cradles him in one arm. “Can you walk?”

He shakes his head, panicked. “Don, the guy. Zedes. He wants to kill you.”

“He’s dead, Charlie. He’s dead.”

“He’s dead?”

“I promise you. He’s dead.”

“You got my message?”

“I got your message. I’m gonna take you to a hospital, okay?”

He’s too exhausted to do more than nod. He leans against Don’s jacket. It’s an old fleece jacket Don’s had for years, and it feels incredibly soft against Charlie’s face. Don pulls out his cell and Charlie can hear Terry’s voice faintly, then his father’s, and Don says “Okay, now we wait,” and he settles back against the wall, Charlie’s head on his lap.

“I don’t want to go to sleep,” he says and Don touches his face gently, and starts to sing the alphabet song under his breath, counting every scratch, brushes his hand over the ragged beard that’s grown in during the week.

“Remember when I taught you to read?” he says. “You were three and you wanted so badly to read that stupid bunny book by yourself. I made you sing the alphabet song marching up and down the hallway, and every time you forgot a letter, I made you start all over again.”

Don’s hand keeps skipping where he touches another cut, and it hurts when he touches almost everywhere, but Charlie doesn’t want Don to stop, so he asks “What was the bunny story?” and Don starts telling him about a bunny called Sam who couldn’t remember how many carrots his mother asked him to buy.

 

Then there are lights and people and confusion and his dad’s there and he’s being carried out on a stretcher, but Don doesn’t go with them. Don’s up against a wall, getting handcuffed and read his rights.

Charlie tries to move, but hands push him down gently, and Don looks over his shoulder at Charlie and nods, and Terry’s there and she says “Charlie, he’s going to be fine. It’s standard procedure. He wants you to go to the hospital,” and his father’s crying, so Charlie nods.

Terry rides with them, and she talks quietly to his dad, “He shot the man’s kneecaps, then shot him in the chest. He wasn’t armed, although there were knives and a gun in another room. There will be an investigation, and he’s probably going to be suspended. The bureau will assign him a lawyer, but if you already have a criminal lawyer -”

Three shots, Charlie thinks, before he greys out to sleep. He wasn’t dreaming. Two and one is two kneecaps, one chest. Two and one is three, and he needs to remembers that.

 

His ribs are cracked, he’s got a bacterial infection, eighteen stitches on his scalp, four on his cheek, and a plastic surgeon comes by and pulls on gloves and looks under all the bandages on his back while he bites his lip.

“It looks worse than it is,” the doctor tells him. They shave him and wash his hair and he can almost recognize himself in the mirror afterwards. She lets him have soup on the second day and he can’t manage more than a couple of sips, but his dad beams anyway. His hands are covered in bandages, splints on his little fingers, so he can’t really write, but a nurse finds him a whiteboard marker, and he can hold that in a fist, like a little kid writing. Amita brings huge sheets of whiteboard and they set up a projector so he can keep working.

“I thought about Galois,” he tells Larry when he visits. “Galois actually died because his friends left him wounded in a ditch. I didn’t.”

Larry nods, and gives him a pile of clippings, anything that Charlie might possibly have been interested in while he was missing. “Your brother cracked the code,” he said. “Not that you can really call that a code. Why not just Z for Zorro?”

“I like numbers,” Charlie says.

Terry comes by on the third day, with a file and another FBI agent, a woman who shakes his hand and wears her hair tightly pinned up and doesn’t introduce herself to anyone else, but asks them to leave.

“Now Mr Eppes,” she says. “Please tell us what happened when Special Agent Eppes entered the apartment.”

“Professor Eppes,” he says. He didn’t know it was an apartment, but now he thinks he remembers steps, going down a staircase.

“It wasn’t built?” he asks, remembering scaffolding, emptiness instead of walls.

“Half-built,” Terry answers. “Zedes was working on the crew, and when the company went bankrupt, he stayed there.”

“What’s going to happen to Don?”

The woman answers. “We’re investigating his use of lethal force against Timothy Zedes. Also, while he was on duty, your kidnapping was being handled by another team, and Special Agent Eppes chose to act alone, without informing anyone else of his information, conclusions or intentions.” She spoke in a rapid staccato, syllables dropping one after another. “Pending the investigation, Special Agent Eppes has been suspended.”

“Charlie, you need to tell us,” Terry says. “No matter how terrible it was.”

He meets her gaze and he understands. “I was in the other room,” he says. “The locked room. I heard someone come in, shouting ‘FBI’. Zedes, he said he was going to kill me. That it was too late. He said he had a knife, guns.”

“The door was locked and you were unable to see out?”

He nods. “But I could hear things. I’d had a lot of time to work out where sounds were coming from. My brother, he was on one side, and then there was - Zedes shouted something and Don shouted “Stop, stop!” and I heard the gunshots. Don said “Where is he?” and there was - Zedes, didn’t say anything. Then Don broke the door and got me.”

“How many gunshots did you hear?”

“Three,” he says.

She asks more questions and he answers, and then when she stands up, smoothing her skirt, he says “Can I see the pictures?”

Six print-outs of scanned in poloroids, emailed to Don’s account. He looks at them for a minute, then turns them over and hands them back to the woman.

Terry stays behind. “Charlie,” she says quietly. “You want to talk about it?”

He shakes his head. “Will he lose his job?”

“No, no. This is standard. The AD’s pissed off he went by himself, but the circumstances, it’s all justifiable. He’ll get a suspension, nothing serious.”

“It wasn’t terrible,” he says, looking at her. “There were three gunshots. Just -”

She holds up her hand, stopping him. “I talked to Don, Charlie.”

His father comes back in, and makes Terry take the apple pie he brought for Charlie that he can’t eat yet. Then he settles back in the chair next to Charlie’s bed and flips open his book again.

“Dad?”

His father looks up from his book. “What is it, Charlie?”

“Do you remember a book about a rabbit called Sam?”

 

He goes home after a week. His ribs are still taped up, and his back is softly padded with gauze. He can wash his hair though, and he’s kinda amazed how good that feels. The university gives him another week off, and he plans on spending it working. He leaves the shed door open and lifts the blinds, and every now and then, he stops and stares out at the garden.

They take the stitches out the second day home, and his face is - okay, it looks like he really doesn’t know how to shave, but they’re fading. Amita drops by to tell him that the story’s all over campus, how he used a code to tip off the FBI by carving numbers into his skin. “Very cool,” she reassures him. “Not at all Hannibal Lector. You’re more like a Mulder.”

“How’s Don?” he asks when she’s picking up her bag to leave.

She hesitates then turns and says, “We’re not seeing each other anymore. It was - when you were gone, he was different.” She tries to smile, but she can’t hold it.

“I’m sorry,” Charlie says.

She nods, and then shuts the door quietly behind her.

 

“Dad said you were up here.”

He turns on the light next to his bed, blinks a little and then he can make out Don standing in the doorway. He was trying to get used to sleeping in his own bed, without all the lights on, and he’d managed to get down to just the blinds pulled so the porch lights filtered in.

He doesn’t say anything, still half-drowsy from the painkiller he took after dinner. There’s a sliding moment where he thinks it’s Zedes when he thought it was Don, but then the figure steps closer and turns and closes the door carefully, and Charlie relaxes a little. Zedes would kick the door shut, and there were locks, locks and chains and bars. His door clicks shut, and there are windows around, plenty of places to run.

Don walks over and sits on the bed next to him. “How’re you feeling?” he says, and his eyes don’t reflect the lamplight, just swallow it up.

“Better,” he says. Everything hurts less, and he’s up to the second-to-last hole in his belt now. He can lie down on his back now, if he’s careful.

“Let me see,” Don says and Charlie leans forward obediently, holding out his arms so Don can pull his t-shirt off. There are bruises all over his body still, and it hurts when he stretches, but he grits his teeth and lifts his hips long enough for Don to slide his pajamas down.

Don moves the light on the nightstand, brings it closer. Charlie squints against the light, then Don moves, blocking it, and it’s just Don’s face he sees, as Don touches his head gently, turning him a little to see the cut on his scalp.

Then he brushes his hair back over it, and turns his head the other way, Don’s fingers touching, tapping almost. Exploring his skull, checking. Charlie shivers at the touch.

Don’s hands go down his neck, stop to trace the bruises there. There aren’t many scratches on his neck, just the two slices from Zedes' thumbnails where he pressed in, and they’re at the hollow of Charlie’s throat, so when Don bends his mouth to them, touches them with his tongue, it’s warmth, not pain.

He spans his hands on Charlie’s shoulders, and Charlie groans. Don lifts his head from the length of Charlie’s throat, eases his hands away, and Charlie says “Please. Don’t stop. Please.”

Then Don bends to him again, and his hands stroke down the narrowed lines of Charlie’s arms, and it’s the warmest touch, dry sweet heat. He lifts Charlie’s hands, turns them and traces the cuts there, the lightest touch on the splinted fingers. He presses his mouth against Charlie’s palms, one after another, then brings the palms together, and his tongue slides between Charlie’s hands and his fingers stroke the side of his face, stubble and jaw.

Don touches the bandages on his ribs, and his fingers find the edges, trace lines where the bandages end and Charlie’s skin begins. Bruises, still purple-yellow, and the hard juts of Charlie’s hipbones.

Don kicks off his shoes and crawls onto the bed. He spreads Charlie’s legs, kneels between them and when he looks up at Charlie, he can’t tell if it’s the shadows from the lamplight or something else that makes his brother’s face hollow and stark.

“Did he hurt you like this?” Don asks and he leans, nuzzles against Charlie’s body, the vertex of his thighs, the soft weight of his balls and Charlie feels the warmth stealing up, the dizzy sweetness uncurling when Don touches him, closed kisses along the skin of his thighs, his dick.

“No,” he whispers. “No,” and Don rests his head on his brother’s thighs and Charlie jerks slightly at the scald, then settles. He rests his hands against Don’s, interlacing their fingers, and he waits until Don turns, presses his wet face against the bedsheet and he draws him up, next to him on the pillow. Don’s belt presses against his belly oddly, and he reaches down, the splint tapping at it uncertainly.

“Your gun,” he asks.

“They took it away pending the investigation.” Don closes his eyes and breathes deeply. “You smell different.”

“I got to shower.”

He strokes Don’s hairline, traces his eyebrows. Don’s eyes close and his face is smooth under Charlie’s touch.

“Stay with me,” he asks. He’s never asked before. He’s stayed until Don turns away, he’s left when Don’s opened the door, when Don’s gone first. “Stay the night.”

Don breathes against his face, a tickle of warmth and Charlie smells toothpaste, Don. He turns a little and kisses him, mouths awkward and dry until Don turns a little and their lips meet and tongues, and he’s here, lamplight and the blankets under them, the house quiet and safe. He kisses Don and tries to say _thankyouiloveyouthankyou_ and when Don pulls away and nods, Charlie relaxes.

Don stands up, takes off his watch and puts it by the lamp. His cuffs, then his shirt. The undershirt next, and the light makes the hairs on his chest silver and gold. He undoes his belt, his pants, his boxers. Takes off his socks and all the time, he’s looking at Charlie.

Charlie’s touching himself. One hand on his chest, moving restlessly from his nipples to the curve of his shoulder. The other at his dick, stroking, and he’s hard, curving up, a gleam where he’s wet.

“Your back,” Don says and Charlie raises himself on his elbows, turns. Don pushes a pillow under his stomach, and then he looks at Charlie’s back and his breath makes a low hiss.

Charlie can’t really see them, and they itch now. When they were done, it was hard to tell where one seared line ended, another started. He remembers the poloroid though. No pattern to it, random lines and circles. A Klee painting in burnt red and skin tones. They’re worse on one side, probably because it was easier for Zedes to use his right hand, or maybe Charlie was out of it by then, a pliant canvas.

His father puts ointment on them, mornings and evenings, after the nurses showed him how to do it. Charlie didn’t like the bandages, the way they pulled at the scabs when they were changed, and so he wore a loose t-shirt and slept on his side mostly instead.

“They’ve scarred,” Don says, and he touches them carefully, tracing the curves and lines with the barest touch. It doesn’t hurt exactly. Charlie hasn’t seen them since the second day at the hospital, when the plastic surgeon worked on his back and they held a mirror up at the end to show him.

“What do they look like?” he asks, curious.

“Roots, maybe,” Don says after a while. “Where they twist and join. The curved ones here,” and his fingers land lightly on Charlie’s ribs, near his flanks, and Charlie shivers and presses his dick against the pillow, aching. “They look like a ship, the sails and these two lines -” his fingers trace them, and Charlie gasps quietly. “The prow of the boat, waves.”

“Come on,” Don says after a while and Charlie sits up. He’s falling asleep almost, stretched out on the bed with Don’s hands passing over his back, stroking. He leans into Don, and they stay that way for a while, Charlie’s head at the crook of Don’s shoulder.

“Did you know I would find you,” Don asks and Charlie nods and mouths _yes_ against Don’s throat.

“I killed a man for you,” he says and Charlie looks up and Don’s forehead is creased, his eyes distant. “I thought you were dead, and I went back and I shot him because you were dead.”

And Charlie doesn’t know how to answer the pain in Don’s eyes, the confusion, except to move their bodies together, to lead him down to the bed and kiss him until his eyes closed and his hands moved against Charlie’s skin, remembering, touching.

It’s hard making love, when so much of his body hurts. Don lifts him, carries his weight, and Charlie feels the heat of Don’s body against his chest, the cool night-air from the open windows on his back, and it’s enough, enough that when Don strokes him and whispers “Charlie, Charlie” and comes, that Charlie follows.

  
 

Afterwards, Don gets dressed. He helps Charlie pull on his pajamas, pulls the blankets up and tucks them in around him. “Go to sleep,” he says, and he’s almost at the door when Charlie remembers and struggles up.

“Don’t,” he says. “Don’t go.”

Don stops and he doesn’t turn around. “Charlie, don’t do this,” he says.

He’d move, but he’s frozen and his throat is thick, choked and strangled. His ribs are knives when he breathes. “P vs NP,” Charlie says. “I remember what you said.”

“It’s unsolvable,” Don says and he still doesn’t turn around.

“Please,” Charlie begs.

And Don turns and says “Or what, Charlie? We’ll go tell Dad? Maybe we could just move in together, tell everyone we’re cousins.” He steps closer and Charlie doesn’t move. “That’s a really good idea there, Charlie. I’ll stay the night, and we’ll get caught in bed, naked. Because you know, that’s exactly what my career needs right now.”

“I had a life, Charlie. I had a career, a life. I was going to get married, have kids, be a normal regular guy. Then mom calls and says Charlie needs you, and what do I do? I come back because I fucked up your life, and I’m not, I’m not going to do it again.”

“You die,” Charlie struggles to say. “You die, and I’ll die, Don. That’s what it felt like.” His throat hurts.

“We’re stopping this, Charlie,” Don says at last. “No more. We don’t talk, we don’t touch. You need a, god, you need a normal life, Charlie. A girlfriend, a boyfriend, someone to fall in love with, not me. I’m fucking you up, Charlie.”

Charlie shakes his head. “Don’t go,” he says. “Don’t go.”

But Don doesn’t say anything, just breathes deeply and uncurls his fists, turns and walks out.

Charlie hangs on until he hears the car engine start, the sound fade away. Then he can’t, and the sobs come out, crashing at his ribs, racking his throat. He has to push himself up to breathe, to stop from falling, from shaking apart.

It hurts, it hurts, and he can’t see how it will ever stop.

 

 **Parallel 12**

He thinks about going over to Don’s apartment, bringing a book and just settling in to wait. Sooner or later, Don’s got to go there. But every time he tries to imagine it, Don doesn’t look at him, just unlocks his door and closes it on Charlie, saying “Go home, Charlie. Go home. It’s over.” He tries different arguments, different reasons, but Don, in his head, doesn’t listen to them.

Because Don’s right, and they both know it.

“What do you do,” he asks Larry when they’ve finished string theory and Larry’s on his second cup of hot chocolate in the Eppes’ kitchen, “when you know an answer is wrong, but it’s still the only answer you can come up with?”

Larry answers without hesitating. “Check that the answer’s really wrong. Numbers aren’t right or wrong, and answers are either true or false, Charles.”

Charlie touches his face, another habit he’s picked up since. The scars can’t really be seen, but they can be felt. “What if it’s not numbers,” he says. “What if it’s still wrong.”

Larry squints at him. “I thought everything was numbers, Charles. How do you know the answer’s wrong?”

Charlie gets up and starts clearing the kitchen countertop, rinsing the dishes carefully. “It just is. I know it won’t work.”

“And this is for - oh one of those projects,” Larry says, and taps the side of his nose. “Well, my advice would be to work the numbers back from the other side. An answer is just half of an equation, Charles. Take your answer and use it. See if you get the same data.”

“And if I do? If it’s still wrong?”

“Then you’re asking the wrong question. Rephrase it.”

He makes Larry another cup of hot chocolate, digs through the fridge to find his father’s ginger-carrot cake and slices it up for them. “The history of science woman, the lady you went hiking with.”

“Laura Wilson?”

“Did that work out?”

“We’re still hiking,” Larry says. “The statistics are on an upward trend. That was Amita,” he adds, pointing a forkful of cake at Charlie. “Her game theory argument was quite compelling.”

“Bigger risk, bigger reward, yeah.”

“Bigger penalty too,” Larry says and Charlie looks at him sharply, but Larry just shrugs.

Later, at the door, Larry pauses with his coat half on. “This conversation this evening,” he says. “That was about Amita, wasn’t it?”

“What? No, no. It’s not, it’s not about people. A person.”

“Yet it’s not about numbers, either.” Larry buttons his coat, raises his eyebrows and exits.

  
 

He goes back to the numbers. Ava finds sources for him, when he says he’s looking into finding other child abuse victims in a case. He takes everything she gives him and ignores most of it. There isn’t a lot of data, he finds out, on adult sibling incest, but what there is, he starts to read and quantify. Some of the social science statistics are sloppy, so he reworks them, and there are factors, variables he can put together and the question starts to appear in chalk on his blackboards in the shed.

Don comes over for dinner the night that Charlie's scheduled to give a presentation, so he’s pulling on his jacket and gathering his notes when a car pulls up, thinking it’s the cab, but then Don calls out “Hey Dad,” at the door and Charlie freezes.

“Don,” he says.

Don nods at him. “Charlie. You’re going somewhere?”

“Anomalous diffusion in disordered media,” he says. “But you knew that.”

Then their father comes into the room and hugs Don and tells Charlie that Don’s been reinstated, cleared record. “Come back early, Charlie and we’ll have dessert,” he says and Charlie grins and nods.

“Congratulations,” he says to Don. “I’m really - that’s great news.”

He makes it to the door and the cab without throwing up, and by the time he gets to the hotel where the conference is, he’s not thinking about Don’s shoulders or the curve of his mouth.

He stays out late, winds up at the hotel bar, then someone’s hotel room, and when he gets back to the house, it’s after three, and the lights are all off. He goes to the shed and looks at the algorithm he’s developed, and sees the answer was always there. He picks up the duster and wipes the boards clean.

 

He goes to Cambridge in August, and stays in the spare bedroom of a professor of theoretical physicists. It’s not really a spare bedroom, but their son’s at boarding school, and so Charlie sleeps under Star Wars bedsheets and steps on Lego the first morning. He builds a castle and then the professor, a friend from when Charlie was thirteen and he was a teaching aide who let Charlie tag along around the CalSci campus and snuck him cups of coffee when his mother wasn’t looking, comes up and they spend the morning laying out a town with dinosaur guards and matchbox traffic jams.

“You look tired,” his friend says.

“Jetlag,” Charlie answers.

They have lunch with another group of academics, and Charlie wanders from office to office, sitting in on lectures and staying up late, arguing. He calls his dad when he remembers and once in a while, he takes a train to another town and walks for hours. Thinking, and sometimes, not so much. Feeling.

No-one mentions the scars on his face, and he realises, looking in a shop window one day, that they’ve almost faded.

“Are you seeing anyone, Charlie?” his friend’s wife asks over dinner one night, and Charlie shakes his head then stops.

He says slowly, “I was. For a long time. But it ended recently.”

They don’t ask any more questions, and he’s grateful.

He reads the L.A. Times online, and goes straight to the crime pages; a bank gets robbed, a bystander shot dead. Three jewelry stores are robbed, no-one is shot. A teenage girl is kidnapped and found dead, forty-eight hours later. The father is suspected.

He searches for his brother’s name, and waits.

A week before his flight back, he takes the train to London, checks into a Soho hotel and goes back only to shower and change between people.

He goes back down to Cambridge, quieter. He rests his laptop on his knees and opens a terminal window, calls up his mail.

 __

 _  
Don,_

 _I’m in Cambridge, staying with_

 __

He stops, deletes it, and starts again.

 __

 _I miss you. I touch other people and they’re you. I close my eyes and they’re you under my hands. They touch the scars on my back and I think it’s you. I think I’m dying, except I’m still walking. The walking dead, and it’s the strangest feeling._

 _Everything’s fine. My work’s going well, better maybe than ever before._

 _I think I could give it up if_

 _Maybe. We won’t, will we? I won’t send you this letter, and you won’t look at me, and we’re over._

 _You were right._

 __

He deletes the message, closes the window, shuts his laptop. He watches England go past from the train window and he does not think.

 

His father meets him at the airport, gathers him up in a hug and pats him down, holds him at length and smiles. “You’ve gained weight,” he says. “That’s good. Good. Got your bags?”

On the drive home, he pulls in to a Starbucks and buys them coffees. “The real stuff,” he says, passing one to Charlie.

“They had Starbucks in England,” he points out but it’s still good, the hot sweet coffee and being back home.

“Don’s at the house,” his father says. He looks at Charlie in the rearview mirror. “So he’ll probably be gone by the time we get back, then?”

“Probably,” Charlie says after a while.

“What, fifty, a hundred percent probability?”

Charlie doesn’t say anything and his father sighs and pulls over to the shoulder of the road.

“I’ve talked to your brother,” he says. “Not that he’s saying anything. What about you? You want to tell me what’s going on?”

“I can’t,” Charlie says after a while.

“Can’t or won’t,” his father says and pulls the car back into the traffic.

The driveway’s empty when they get back. His father turns the engine off and they sit there for a moment. “Charlie, when your mother was dying, there was one thing she was glad about.”

His coffee cup’s empty, and he starts working at the creases in the waxed cardboard until they start to split.

“It brought you and your brother back together. She never understood why you two stopped talking.”

“He was in New Mexico. We were in two different worlds, we just didn’t have anything to talk about,” Charlie says. The words are hollow, sounds and letters arranged without order. His mother never said anything. Or maybe she did, and he never listened. He doesn’t remember all the times Don said no.

“Charlie,” his father says. “We knew.”

The cup cracks and the edge of it presses hard into his hand.

“This thing with Kim, Amita. Was it something like that? A girl?” His dad pauses and says, “A boy?”

Charlie flushes and drops the pieces of the cup on his lap.

“Whatever it is,” his father finishes, “Don’s your brother, Charlie. You lost him once and you got a second chance. You think this is what your mother would've wanted?”

Charlie undoes his seatbelt and gets out of the car, slamming the door behind him.

 

Terry meets him for coffee during her lunch-break. “I really don’t feel comfortable talking about your brother with you,” she says immediately. “What do you want?”

“Is he all right,” he says, and she sighs and orders a slice of carrot cake to go with her coffee.

“Work’s fine,” she says. “But he’s distracted and short-tempered. He never talks about anything outside work.” She picks up her coffee cup but doesn’t drink. “I think he’s seeing someone. He hasn’t said, but there are calls, and well,” her mouth curves, “He’s dressing a little better.”

He tells her about England, and Terry says she always wanted to travel, that that was why she joined the Army to start with.

“The army?” he says, surprised and Terry laughs and nods.

She asks him when they’re leaving if he’ll tell her, if he wants to talk to her, and he shakes his head.

“I had a sister,” she says. “She died when I was sixteen. A car accident. Fix this, Charlie.” She starts to say something, then pauses and tells him, “Fix it soon.”

 

He considers getting high-powered binoculars or a web camera and rigging up some kind of surveillance system, but he’s pretty sure Don would notice it, what with the FBI training.

In the end, he decides to go to Don’s apartment and see what he can figure out. He takes his dad’s spare keys and goes over during the afternoon. Nothing’s changed, but then he opens the medicine cabinet.

Tampax, a bottle of expensive moisturizer. There’s a second toothbrush in the cabinet, a travel one.

He finds condoms in the nightstand, a half-empty box. There’s a new bottle of lubricant, barely used. He closes the drawer slowly and sits down on the bed.

After a while, he pulls the sheets back and crawls inside. The pillows smell of Don, and he falls asleep.

 

He wakes up and it’s a grey five o’clock, the sky clouded over. He wanders into the kitchen and makes coffee, drinks a cup at the table and runs his hand over the wood, trying to find a pattern in the grain from one end to another. He thinks about how the wood’s manufactured, how the tree grows - he took a course in biology years ago, and he liked it, liked the way things followed rules and still managed to be so different.

There has to be a way to track it, to reconstruct the curve from the pieces left behind in the planed off slices of wood. He finds a piece of paper in one of the drawers, a stub of pencil, and starts working.

Rain starts at seven, splatters the windows and he gets a jacket out from Don’s wardrobe, pulls it on. His cell rings and it’s his father. “I’m at Don’s,” he says and his father says “Good, good. Well, I’ll keep some dessert for you, Charlie.”

There’s nothing to eat in Don’s fridge, and Charlie’s not really hungry anyway. He goes back to the bed and climbs back in. The bed’s cold and it’s nearly ten, and Don isn’t back yet. He drifts into an uneasy sleep.

 

“Charlie?” Someone shakes him awake and he opens his eyes, and it’s Don, smelling of beer and aftershave.

Charlie smiles sleepily. “Hey, Don,” he says, and his voice is sleep-heavy. The sheets are warm and thick and comfortable now. “I was waiting for you.”

“Who’s this? Goldilocks?” a woman’s voice from behind Don says.

Don straightens up and turns around. Charlie can’t see who he’s talking to in the gloom. “It’s my younger brother, Charlie. He must’ve crashed here.”

“You’ve got a brother?” The voice comes nearer, and Charlie struggles awake. A face appears over Don’s shoulder, and Charlie blinks. The woman’s beautiful, even with her lipstick smudged, her hair tangled. She slings her arm around Don and leans down to Charlie. “Hello, sweetie,” she says and she smells of perfume and wine, clashing with Don’s aftershave.

“He’s cute,” she says and Don frowns and Charlie comes fully awake.

“I was uh, hi.” He sits up in the bed, glad he fell asleep with all his clothes on, and holds out his hand. She laughs and shakes hands, her fingers cool and thin. “Charlie Eppes.”

“Karen Smith,” she returns and then she pats Don’s shoulder, announces that she’s going to fix them nightcaps and trips off to the kitchen.

“She seems nice,” Charlie offers.

“She is.”

“What does she do?”

“She’s a model. TV ads, that kind of thing.” Don folds this arms. “Charlie, you need to leave.”

Charlie looks at Don, but his brother isn’t looking at him. He’s staring across the room, at the windows. The rain’s still coming down, and it makes the world outside vanish, leaves just this apartment, this quiet bedroom with the two of them, a few feet apart.

“I wanted to see how you are,” Charlie says. “If we could fix things. I miss you.”

“Yeah, well.” Don crosses his arms. “You’re going to have to get used to it, Charlie. Go home, okay? Go home.”

Charlie finds his shoes in the hall, laces them on, and then remembers and starts to take Don’s borrowed jacket off.

“Keep it,” Don says. “It’s cold outside.”

The woman, Karen, appears with a tumbler in her hand. “You’re leaving already?” she says. “I just made you a drink. Have you called a cab yet?” She takes both their hands and Charlie has time to notice that her hair smells like Amita’s, the same shampoo, when it flies back, a cloud of curls, then he’s stumbling along into the kitchen. There’s a jug of something dark and gleaming, and two more tumblers.

“A lot or really a lot?” she asks. When she moves, her whole body moves, little shimmers of her shoulders, her hair tossed from side to side. Her nose wrinkles when she pours the drinks, and she’s intensely pretty. She’s not wearing a bra under her slip dress, and Charlie can’t quite look below her neck.

Don pulls out a kitchen chair and sits down. “He doesn’t drink, Karen,” he says and Charlie picks up one of the tumblers and makes himself swallow. It’s strange, like thin vile coffee, but it’s better than leaving.

“So brothers, huh?” she asks, resting her chin on her hand. “I can see the resemblance.”

“How was the shoot?” Don says, and she turns to him, suddenly animated and starts complaining about her make-up, the clothes, the weather, the guy who thought she should have a look at this script. They drink and she talks, and every now and then Don says something and Karen keeps talking.

Everything takes on a glow and when she refills his glass, he takes a longer swallow, tastes it, and it’s sort of nice now. Pepper and cinnamon, and the sting of alcohol.

“Charlie? Charlie!” He looks up and he was just resting his head for a minute, trying to see if the wood grain on the plank here followed the same pattern as the rest of the table.

“I’m awake,” he says and grins because Karen’s laughing and it’s really kind of funny and he feels light, floating-light and good. Warm for the first time in months.

“God, your brother’s a lightweight.”

“Did you have dinner? Charlie, did you eat anything?”

He shakes his head and the room spins, the lights blurring crazily. Not so much fun, but Karen’s still giggling and he likes her, she’s pretty. She must make Don happy, right? Because Don’s happy, that’s what Don says. Except -

“You didn’t say you were happy,” Charlie says, puzzled. “Did I ask you? I was going to. Are you happy?”

“All right, you, my friend, are going to lie down for a while.” Then Don’s pulling him up, and Charlie relaxes, leans and it’s so good, so damn good, and he sways a little, whispers Don’s name and they’re walking down the hallway, to the bed.

Charlie lies down, he’s just going to close his eyes for a second, and Don’s pulling off his shoes, drawing the blanket up. “You sleep it off, okay?” Don says and Charlie says quickly, before he forgets, because this is important, “Don’t go. Don’t go,” but it’s too late and Don’s gone.

 

There’s a cool hand against his forehead and he says, confused “Don?” but then the mouth that kisses him tastes of lipstick, and the body climbing on top is too light to be Don.

“Hey, little brother,” Karen whispers. “You really sleeping?” She kisses him again and her hair tickles his face, but she tastes like the drink, and maybe, Charlie thinks, Don, and he kisses her back.

Her dress is spaghetti straps, falling off her shoulders and her breasts are high and firm, nipples brushing against his t-shirt, and when he squeezes them gently, she murmurs “Oh yeah” and pulls the dress up, over her shoulders, tosses it on the floor.

She’s wearing panties, a little scrap of black lace, and she’s got pale golden skin, no marks. Flawless, and it’s smooth under Charlie’s hands. She arches, and her hair is a tumble down her back, and it’s really pretty. Like a dream, Charlie thinks, and then she’s back kissing him, and he doesn’t think, because everything’s slow and fast, and she moves against him like a cat, almost purring when she pushes up his shirt, undoes his pants.

There’s a really good reason he shouldn’t be doing this he thinks, as she wriggles out of her panties. “Condom,” she says and she reaches for the nightstand drawer without looking, rips a packet open and rolls it on. “God, you two are a lot alike,” she says and her smile widens and before Charlie remembers to stop, she straddles him and moves down, and it’s too late.

She takes his hands, one on her ass, one on her clit, and says “Yeah, like that, oh yeah, yeah,” long crooned sounds and she moves and Charlie can’t bear to watch her as he moves in her.

Then she says “You gonna just stand there and watch?” and he opens his eyes and Don’s at the doorway, and Karen doesn’t stop moving, little circles against his dick, and Charlie almost comes.

“You look good,” Don says. His voice is strange, tight. Charlie tries to sit up, but Karen squeezes her thighs, and he’s trapped, still moving against her heat.

“Come and play,” she says and Don pushes himself off the door and climbs onto the bed behind her. He wraps his arms around her, sleeves rolled up and she leans back against him, naked and golden against his white business shirt. Don kisses her and Charlie can see his tongue on her mouth, the dip and slide of his tongue against her lips. His brother’s hands on her breasts, cupping them completely. Don has strong hands, blunt long fingers, and when he slides one hand down Karen’s side, round the shallow curve of her belly to the curls there, his fingers brush Charlie’s body, and he’s touching him, touching as he touches her, rubbing her so she’s moans and shivers around Charlie. Don’s hand works her, his arm holding her in place, and Charlie can’t move, because all the time, Don’s looking at him.

Then Karen comes, and she pulls away from Don, her body skimming Charlie’s, and she moves faster, presses her face against his neck, and Don’s hand is trapped between their bodies, still moving and Charlie can feel himself rocking, and it’s helpless, helplessly slow and he needs to move, needs something and she’s around him, then he slips out, still hard and it’s Don’s hand that holds him, guides him back inside, Don’s fingers at the base of his dick, and Charlie shouts, comes.

Then Don gets off the bed and Karen rolls off of him, stretching out across the bed. “Stay there,” Don says and she nods and strokes Charlie’s face, pushing his curls back.

“You’re a cutie,” she says. “Real cute.”

Don’s naked and Charlie hears the crinkle of the condom package, but then Karen lies back, uncrosses her legs and closes them around Don’s hips. Her toenails are painted, and when Don moves, his back flexing and Charlie unable to stop watching, her feet point, the nails blood red and shiny smooth.

Don fucks her and she looks at Charlie, and he kisses her and she makes a sound into his mouth, and he presses himself against them, fitting his third body against their pair, and it’s almost enough, almost the same, but Don rises, slides into her and comes, and they both watch him, the vein on his forehead, the way his mouth opens and then closes, the easing as he comes, and then his face closing off again, and Don climbs off them both, gets out of the bed and goes to the bathroom. Closes the door.

“You wanna shower?” Karen asks him and Charlie shakes his head. “Me neither,” she says, and snuggles into his arms, shaking her hair out so it covers the pillow. She falls asleep, her breathing light and rapid and Charlie stares at the ceiling.

 

In the morning, the bed is empty. Charlie has a pounding headache, but he manages to open a bottle of Advil and swallow some with tap water from the bathroom sink. He looks at himself in the mirror, and he’s not sure if he’s looked this bad since he came back from the hospital. There are red creases on the side of his face from the pillow, and his hair’s tangled into clumps, bits that stick up no matter how much he tries to pat them down. He takes Karen’s toothbrush from the medicine cabinet and brushes his teeth.

He expects the flat to be empty, to find at most a note, or just his shoes and his bag in a silent pile next to the door.

Don’s in the kitchen, with the newspapers and a pot of coffee. “You want some?” he asks and Charlie finds a mug and pours a cup.

“What happened to your hands,” is the first thing he can think of to say. Don’s knuckles are split, bruised, and a couple of them awkwardly swollen.

“Bathroom wall,” Don says shortly. He folds up the sports section, picks up the business section. Charlie scrubs at his face and tries to think. The headache’s wearing down, and the coffee’s a jolt, but he’s still - something he’s forgetting.

“Where’s Karen?”

“Work.” Don finishes with the paper after a while, stands up and digs around in a cupboard until he produces a box of Pop-Tarts. He’s sleep-mussed, with a faded t-shirt and boxers, bare feet on the linoleum. Charlie can see the dark hair at his throat, the soft lines of his body under the clothes. The kitchen smells of coffee and burnt sugar. City noises filter through the window, and he’s gotta still be drunk because all he can think of is the way Don would feel if he pressed against his back, wrapped his arms around him, and Don turned and kissed him, swayed against him in the kitchen, just the two of them.

The toaster dings and Don finds a couple of plates and puts them down on the table. “You like strawberry, right?” he says and Charlie feels himself break a little because Don sounds so serious, and it’s true. He always liked strawberry the best.

He checks the paper; it’s a Saturday. September, and school term’s just started up. New students, and he’ll give them his math, the language of nature, speech, and new post-grads. It’s Amita’s last year, and she’s already talking about other universities. Her thesis is good, strong material, an excellent mind, but when she’s gone, he thinks, he’ll have to find another friend.

He’s not sure why he’s thinking about Amita, sitting in Don’s kitchen. It’ll be just him and Larry, and Larry has his own friends, Laura Wilson. It’ll be him and his numbers, his dad when he’s not on dates or bowling.

He’ll be lonely, he thinks.

“I never looked,” he says and the thought is so puzzling, so new that he can’t stop himself from speaking. “I never really tried dating anyone, or looking for someone else. I mean, Amita liked me first. And there was that guy, George. And that girl, what was her name, the one who was a med student and she kept coming over to the house all the time?”

“Sam,” Don says. “She was four years older and Mom was scared you were going to elope with her.”

“I slept with her, but I never really thought of her like that. I just -” Charlie shrugs, baffled. “It was always you.”

“I fucked you up,” Don says quietly. “I should’ve taken care of you, should’ve protected you. I fucked up your life, Charlie.”

“You didn’t, Don,” he says, and he can’t sit still, can’t say this from across the kitchen table. He goes over and crouches next to Don’s chair, looks up at him. “I promise you,” he says. “You never - how normal a life do you think I was ever going to have? All I ever wanted was you and maths.”

“This is wrong,” Don says and his hand steals to Charlie’s hair, his thumb against the scrape of stubble on his jaw. “It’s wrong, Charlie.”

“I know,” Charlie says. “But we can’t fix it any other way. We’ve tried.”

“We just stop, Charlie. We stop.”

“It’s not working,” he says and he turns his face to Don’s hand, presses his mouth against his palm. “Are you happy?”

“It doesn’t matter,” Don says and he draws his hands back, sinks his face into them and doesn’t look at Charlie. “It doesn’t matter if I’m happy, Charlie. I’ve gotta do the right thing.”

“I love you,” Charlie says. “I’ve loved you since we were kids. We’ve been - it’s been over a decade, Don. This isn’t an anomaly.”

“Let me guess, you’ve done research, right?” Don turns his head a little and Charlie can see he’s smiling, a little. “I bet you’ve got a chart or something.”

“An equation, but it didn't account -"

“Charlie, it’s not numbers, this thing. It isn’t about what we want - it’d kill Dad to start with. You think this is what our parents would want? You think this is going to make everything okay? We lie and have sex in secret and that’s going to make us happy?” He looks at Charlie with tired eyes and Charlie sits back on his heels. “Buddy,” he says gently, and this is the voice Don used when Charlie couldn’t go places, when Charlie was too small, too little to tag along. “We can’t do this anymore.”

“Are you going to leave?” Charlie asks after a while.

Don nods slowly. “I applied in May. Transfer’ll take another couple of weeks.”

“Where will you go?”

“Washington,” Don says. “It’s a promotion, a pay rise. I’ve got an apartment lined up, and I know some people there.”

“Does Dad know?”

“Yeah.”

 

Don drives Charlie back to the house, drops him off outside. Charlie goes in, and he thinks he should’ve showered, but their father says nothing. Just takes his bag and tells him to get cleaned up for lunch.

“When did he tell you he was leaving?” Charlie asks after they’ve finished the soup and bread. His headache’s back but he doesn’t feel like taking anything for it.

“In June,” his father says. “I’m sorry, Charlie.”

“Will you miss him?” Charlie asks and his voice wavers, cracks.

His father reaches over and squeezes his hand. “Yes, I will,” he says. “You know, you could visit him, up in Washington.”

Charlie shakes his head. “I didn’t visit him in New Mexico,” he says after a while.

 

There’s no winter in Pasadena, just cooler nights. Charlie gets his driver’s license and buys Larry’s old car. He sometimes drives by Don’s old apartment building, parks for a while, and thinks.

Spring, and Amita defends her thesis and Charlie takes her out for dinner to celebrate. She kisses him afterwards, giddy with champagne and success. “Dr Ramanujan!” he says and kisses her back.

“Maybe I chose the wrong Eppes brother,” she says with a laugh when he lets her come up to breathe. Then she sees his face and says “Oh, Charlie, I’m sorry.”

She doesn’t know what she’s apologising for, and Charlie thinks sometimes that he must’ve imagined it all. It seems like a fever dream, fantasy. Don calls from Washington, and they talk like they always did. Cases, their father, the house. Baseball and math. He helps Terry and David sometimes, and the FBI hires him to expand the serial rapist algorithm over more crimes.

Maybe he did imagine it, he thinks. There are scars still on his face, his back and his ribs ache if he runs too fast. But the rest of it, it was never entirely real, anyway. Schrodinger’s sex, he thinks to himself, and it’s almost funny.

Summer comes, and Larry invites him on a week-long hike. Laura Wilson is there, and they pitch their tent away from the others, and there’s talk of a wedding, Larry stammering and flustered whenever it comes up, and Laura smiling serenely. She does have great trail sense, and they hike out further than Charlie’s ever been.

He slips away from camp and climbs up a rock formation to a flat slab. Stars glitter overhead, and the milky way is a thick white spill of them, tinged at the edges with blue. He lies back and counts them.

“Charles,” calls a voice and he peers over the rocks. Larry waves at him then struggles up to collapse on the rock next to him.

“Stars,” Charlie explains and Larry folds up his jacket for a pillow and lies back.

“You know something, Larry?” Charlie says after they’ve talked about quantum gravity and black holes. “There are a lot of songs about break-ups. Not so many about getting back together.”

Larry scrunches his face up for a while then nods. “I take it the game theory conversation we had which may or may not have been about Amita, is no longer relevant?”

“Game over,” Charlie says. “Have you got any pithy quotes, maybe some examples from the lives of great mathematicians?”

Larry thinks about it for a while. “Not really,” he says in the end. “But the stars are still here. I find that comforting.”

Charlie closes his eyes and lets himself cry. Larry says nothing, but they stay there until dawn, and when they go back to the camp, Charlie’s hungry, ravenous, for the first time since Don left, maybe longer.

 

 **Parallel 13**

In 1993, Don Eppes opened his door to find his brother waiting there. His New York apartment was a rathole, a sink and a hotplate for a kitchen and a shower that wailed when the hot water came on. He made up the couch, called their parents to check that Charlie hadn’t run away, and when he hung up, he took his brother into his bed again.

He swore it would never happen again.

  
 

In 1995, he had a better apartment. He was seeing a lawyer and he thought of Terry Lake from the Academy sometimes, but she’d been posted to Oregon. He went home for Passover, and his mother hugged him and then his dead, and finally his baby brother. Charlie’s hair had grown and he was up for tenure, and it was all his mother could talk about. His dad took him to his favourite bar, and they talked about baseball and his job. He wasn’t sure if he would stay in the FBI, if he’d made the right choice. The lawyer thought he was wasted there.

“I’m proud of you, Don,” his father said. “You’re doing good work, difficult work.”

He went by the university the day before he flew back to New York. Charlie was giving a lecture, and when he saw Don sitting at the back of the hall, his smile blazed.

He drove them to a motel, paid for a night and fucked his brother all night. Left him there in the morning and went straight to the airport.

 

  
In 1996, he met Charlie three times, once in New York, twice in California. They never had sex in their parents’ home. Don broke up with the lawyer and dated two women and three men that year. He never brought them back to his apartment. Only Charlie went there.

 

In 1997, he got drunk after working seventy-two hours on a case that ended with two children dead, the grandfather in custody. He called Charlie’s cell and Charlie answered, groggy with sleep. “Talk to me,” he said, and Charlie whispered dirty things until Don gasped and came into a wad of tissue paper. He hung up and let his phone go to voicemail the rest of the night.

“I’m worried about Charlie,” his mother said when she called the next week. “He’s working on this problem that can’t be solved.”

He took a day’s leave for a long weekend and flew to California, rented a car. His brother was in his room, surrounded by piles of paper, notes pinned all over the walls. When Don came in, Charlie told him to go away, and didn’t stop writing until Don pulled the pen from his hand and pushed him down on his bed, fucked him with their parents downstairs, with the papers crushed underneath their bodies and Charlie’s hands scratching, clawing at his back.

He got a promotion and his family flew to New York to celebrate. His parents splashed out on a hotel room uptown and Charlie stayed at Don’s apartment. He made up the couch and they stayed up late, Don drinking steadily until the weather channel was the only thing left and Don stretched out under Charlie and told him to fuck him, and Charlie did.

 

In 1998, he woke up from a two-day bender and applied for a transfer. He moved to New Mexico, and when his parents flew out to see him, and Charlie didn’t come, Don wasn’t disappointed.

He started having lunch with another agent, Kimberly Hall, and by August, they had moved in together. She flew home for Thanksgiving, and didn’t ask him to come, so when he went back for Passover, he went by himself. It was only two days, one night, and at the airport, he took Charlie into a bathroom stall and came, messily with Charlie clinging to him, his lashes fluttering against Don’s throat when he swallowed. “This is the last time,” he told Charlie and Charlie nodded and kissed him desperately because Don hadn’t spoken to his brother almost the entire time he’d been in Pasadena, had hung up on Charlie’s calls all year, and Don kissed him back with the same desperation because this time, he swore, this time was the last.

 

In 1999, he sent Charlie a card and a book on baseball statistics for his birthday. Charlie called to thank him, and Don held the receiver in his hand long after Charlie had stuttered goodbye. Sex with Kim that night was hot and fierce, and he didn’t tell her why.

 

In 2000, he didn’t talk to Charlie. He emailed his mother things Charlie might’ve been interested in, mailed her a book he’d seen at a secondhand store in Arizona when he drove there with Kim for a week’s break.

  
 

In 2001, it got easier.

 

In 2002, it rained harder that autumn in New Mexico, but when his father called with the news, it was a clear, almost perfect day, Don remembers. His mother was diagnosed with breast cancer, stage two. He told Kim he loved her, brought her a ring and flew home. He called her again when his mother reached for his hand unseeing while the doctor said he was very, very sorry. Charlie wasn’t there; Charlie was giving a tutorial, preparing a paper, consulting, at the library, in his room with the door locked.

He took a demotion in the transfer to an LA branch office, and found a decent apartment half an hour from his parents’ house in Pasadena. He called Kim and she hung up on him, then called back and said “Fine.” When he went back to Albuquerque, she had packed all his things, labeled the boxes. There was a letter, addressed to his parents’ house in Pasadena. The ring was inside.

Terry Lake was working at the LA office, he found out when she was called in to profile doctors in a malpractice investigation. They had lunch and she said she’d put in a good word for him.

 

In 2003, he got moved up to the central office. His mother went into the hospital for the second time.

She came home, and Charlie stayed in his room. They moved her bed downstairs so it was easier for her, and sometimes Don would have to help her up the stairs, up to Charlie’s room where she would knock and wait for her youngest son to let her inside, to let her sit quietly while he worked.

Don got drunk twice, when she was in the hospital, and went up the stairs alone to knock on Charlie’s door. Charlie opened the door and said nothing, and it was easier that way.

 

In 2004, early with a little Christmas tree on the sidetable, mistletoe above her bed and the menorah on the mantle, she stopped breathing one night. Don remembers that, resuscitating his mother. Her mouth was cold and when she breathed again, it sounded like a death rattle. He remembers Charlie screaming, except his father said later that Charlie had slept through it, slept through the ambulance arriving, the paramedics, everything.

She went back to the hospital, and she didn’t come home again. Don thought maybe of calling Kim, Terry. College friends, the people he went for Friday beers with. There wasn’t really anyone. He helped his father arrange the funeral, helped him pack up their mother’s things. He made excuses for Charlie when he didn’t come to the funeral.

A week after the funeral, Don went by the house. He’d been drinking in a bar, on his own, and he wanted to be in the kitchen he grew up, to have his father make him hot chocolate, and talk about the news, or maybe his mother. He wanted to go home.

“Dad’s asleep,” Charlie said. He was sitting in the living room, on the sofa that had replaced their mother’s hospital bed. The TV was on, Nova droning on, and Charlie was half-hidden under a pile of blankets. Three empty bowls held down paper, a laptop on a stack of books. Don walked over and turned the TV off, and then Charlie seemed even smaller, his hair grown past his collar, hiding his face.

“You gonna clean up this mess?” he asked and Charlie didn’t say anything. “Charlie, you had a shower today? Maybe done some laundry? I don’t know, helped Dad out at all?”

“I’m working on a problem,” Charlie said. “Turn the TV back on.”

“Do the dishes first.”

Charlie just stared at him, and Don felt the anger curling, uncurling. Like the heat rising from a banked fire, the pleasure of the invisible burn, the feeling warming him up. “Get up,” he said and his voice was low, low enough to let his father keep sleeping, for sharpness to make them a snarl. “Get up, get up, Charlie.”

“Or what?”

And that’s enough, the sulky tone, the way Charlie looked past him, watching the blank TV screen. Sitting where their mother used to lie, waiting for Charlie to come and talk to her, for Charlie to say goodbye. Except she was gone, and Charlie was left behind and he didn’t care.

It’s hard to hit a person under blankets, to hit someone squirming away, back against the sofa. Easier to pull the blankets off, to drag them up by their collar and shake them. See Charlie’s eyes widen and Charlie looking at him for the first time in months. Anger flaring low in his belly, hard anger and it’s nothing but rage that makes him push his brother onto the sofa, makes him force Charlie down again, makes him breathless. Anger at the way Charlie takes it, lies limp and uncaring.

He bends down, bites. Nips at the side of Charlie’s neck, drags his fingers through Charlie’s hair, and suddenly Charlie’s moving, whimpering, and Don rakes his nails against his side, all the anger leaking, boiling, steam in their kisses, in the tightness of his hold on Charlie’s wrists, the kicking of Charlie’s legs under him, and he wants this. He wants Charlie frightened of him, Charlie fighting.

And then Charlie gasps, throws his head back and keens, a high frightened wail, and Don feels his brother shake, feels the anger break and sickness replace, and it’s too late for anything, too late but to gather him up, to hold him and muffle the sounds of Charlie mourning with his own mouth.

He goes back to his apartment, afterwards, and doesn’t sleep. In the morning, he looks at himself in the mirror and promises, never again.

  
 

In 2005, he breaks his promise, over and over again.

 

In 2006, Don Eppes is Special Agent in Charge of a field office in Washington DC. He specializes in organized crime, and he carries his gun with him all the time now, sleeps with it within reach. He works six or seven days a week. He has an apartment that’s perfectly tidy, comfortable. The door to one room is closed, because it’s filled with boxes from moving that he still hasn’t opened.

His father calls him every week. He has a Google search on his brother’s name, and he hears from Terry once in a while. It’s enough, he tells himself, when he remembers that it isn’t.

“You hear from Charlie?” his father asks and Don doesn’t react, doesn’t do more than say No, he hasn’t. Why?

“He went up to Washington last week. FBI work, that hot spot program you two worked on. The one with the LA Rapist. Anyway, he was up there doing some consulting, and I thought maybe he saw you.”

“I was working on a case all week,” he lies easily. “Outside Washington, and it was pretty late hours. I probably missed his call.”

Their father sighs and changes the subject.

When Don gets off the phone, he checks his email, then the hotmail account he has as back-up. He goes through his voicemail, and when he gets home that night, he brings the mail in and sorts it carefully. It’s still all junk and bills.

He had a normal week last week, work at a lull between big cases. Catching up on paperwork, writing proposals and reviewing case notes from agents reporting to him. They had a couple of good leads, two arrests planned this week. He meant to spend his day off doing laundry, watching TiVo’d sports and sleeping.

He sleeps badly and he leaves the apartment early in the morning, dressed for a run with twenty dollars tucked in his sleeve. He runs, but he doesn’t stop at the gas station where he usually buys some water and turn around. He keeps on running.

Past the office buildings, the roads choked with commuter cars, running till he comes to a road lined with trees, a park. He turns down the sidewalk, his legs still loose, moving with steady intent, his body carrying him away. He runs and he runs, and finally he’s far away that he doesn’t know this place, doesn’t read the street signs, just reaches the end of a road and stops.

He’s panting, a stitch and a cramp struggling through the rush, sending him down to his knees. He makes himself stretch, works stubbornly until his body gives in, works with him.

Then he sits down, on a sidewalk someplace strange, and he tells himself that he’s run far enough.

He can’t run anymore.

 

 **Parallel 14**

Charlie imagines sometimes that he’ll see Don at their father’s funeral. They’ll get drunk and fight and fuck in the empty house, and then Don will leave. He had sat in his hotel room in Washington and stared at the telephone, at the number his father had written down and given to him right before his plane left.

He didn’t call and it hurt, it felt like he’s been kicked in the stomach, but he managed. They offered him a tour of the FBI office, and he said no. Someone asked if he was Don Eppes' brother and he nodded, and they told him warmly what a great guy Don was.

He goes home and his father doesn’t ask, and Charlie thinks this is the test, this is something he’s passed. He’s over it, he tells himself, and maybe it’s true. He doesn’t think of Don, except late at night, except in someone else’s bed. He brings them home now, because it makes his father happy, and god knows, Charlie hasn’t done much of that, he realises.

 

“Charlie,” someone says on the phone one day and he doesn’t know who it is until they say his name again and again and suddenly he remembers and he gets up, closes his office door and sits down with the receiver cupped in his hands.

It’s Don on the phone, the crackle of bad reception, and Charlie tries to imagine him in Washington, standing on a street corner with his cell.

“Meet me at the corner of Fifth and MacNaulty,” Don says and Charlie finds a pencil and writes this down.

“When?” he asks.

“Can you - when -” and he says “Now,” immediately and Don doesn’t say anything, just the sound of his breath or maybe wind against the receiver. “Charlie,” Don says, and then the phone clicks.

The corner of Fifth and MacNaulty is a diner. Charlie drives there, finds a parking space and feed the meter with all the coins he can find in his pocket, and then he stands there, his hands in his pockets and he’s not entirely sure if he’s meant to go to the diner, or if maybe Don meant the corner, the actual sidewalk.

He crosses the road, and at the curb, he can see Don through the diner’s glass windows. He’s turned away, a profile in one of the booths with a cup of coffee, an empty plate in front of him. Something stutters, flares in Charlie and he’s dizzy, dizzied with longing, with desire, with want. He knows he’s failed, he knows that Don never wanted this, that he’s hurting his brother, and he tries to make himself turn away, to walk back to the car.

He puts his hand on the door, pushes it open.

He slides into the booth opposite Don and neither of them say anything. A waitress wanders over and Charlie coughs and orders a coffee.

“The pie’s pretty good,” Don says.

Charlie adds a slice of pie. He’s not sure what to do with his hands, to keep them on the table, underneath on his lap. To shake Don’s hand, to touch him lightly, platonically. He needs to know the right language, the right words.

“I drove down,” Don says and Charlie can see it, the shadows under Don’s eyes, the exhaustion in the way he moves. “Two days, kept passing every exit, every chance to go back, but I just kept on driving. Straight a line as I could make it,” he says.

“Are you going back soon?” Charlie asks. His eyes sting, but he’s not sure why. Maybe out of sympathy for the tiredness in Don’s. The waitress brings him a cup, pours the coffee. It froths where it hits the surface, little bubbles appearing and disappearing in milliseconds. There’s nothing to keep them there, just unbearable momentary tension on both sides, and then the membrane breaks, the bubble bursts.

“I took a week’s leave,” Don says. He rubs his hand over his face. His stubble’s grown in dark, and there are new lines on his face. Charlie memorizes them, and then Don looks at him, his hand still rubbing his chin, his jaw, then setting down, slowly, in the center of the table. “Charlie,” he says. “Maybe some things can’t be solved. Maybe they just have to be worked through.”

“P vs NP,” Charlie says slowly, carefully. “Play the game out.”

“Try,” Don agrees. His hand trembles slightly against the table.

Charlie tries to remember a time he hasn’t loved his brother. He remembers being little and crying when the schoolbus came and Don had to go. Remembers baseball games and getting to carry the mitt afterwards. He remembers turning twelve, thirteen and seeing his brother again, watching him and not understanding what was different, only knowing it was.

The summer he was fourteen and about to graduate college, they rented a cottage by the beach, and Don learnt to sail and found a girl with a tan and sun-bleached hair. Charlie stayed inside, hidden in a corner with his books and once, when his parents went out, Don and the girlfriend crept back in, and Charlie stayed quiet while she untied her bikini, when Don started touching her. He stayed quiet and there was the line of Don’s body, muscles from the flex of his calves to his shoulders, lifting him up, then down, the noises they made, the colour of the girl’s tanned thighs against the milk-white of Don’s legs.

When he was sixteen, he finally grew the extra height his mother had always promised him, and something happened, enough that girls stopped to talk to him, and a teaching assistant gave him English tuition and blowjobs in her office. He was sixteen, and it was like a code he’d finally cracked, and the key was his own body.

There was a grad student, twenty-three, who asked for his help on a bio-chemistry model. He was tall, clean-cut, and when Charlie lay down under him in his shabby student flat a month later, he felt fourteen again. Fourteen but sure of himself now, fourteen and all the restlessness, the confusion still driven to clarity in the one clear line of Don’s body.

A groove, repetition worn into a pattern, or a fractal, constantly changing with one underlying pattern emerging over and over again. He’s never really thought he could change it, that he might, could, should, would.

Don’s always been his big brother. Don’s always been the answer, and Charlie has no choice but to believe. P always is NP.

Charlie swallows and puts his hand on the table, not quite touching, not quite near. But near enough that behind the coffee cups, the sides of their little fingers touch.

When the waitress brings the slice of pie, she refills their coffee cups, but they don’t move until she’s gone. Then Don’s fingers ghost over Charlie’s hand and he picks up his cup and sips. “You sure?” he says quietly.

Charlie takes a bite out of the pie, and it’s strawberry, big jellied chunks with flakes of pastry, and it melts on his tongue, sticky sweet and intense. He cuts a piece off with his fork and offers it to Don. Their hands touch again and it’s a little like burning his hand with an iron, except it’s everything but painful.

“Yes,” he says. “Yes.”

“Yeah?” Don asks, and this time he’s smiling, a little crookedly, but his eyes crinkle and Charlie unfolds his legs under the table, moves so their shoes tap at each other, their calves brushing against each other.

“Yeah,” he says and ducks his head, smiles up at Don, smiles and doesn’t look away. He doesn’t have to.

They finish the pie between them and Don leaves twenty dollars under the plate. At the door, Don’s hand goes under Charlie’s elbow, and he guides him over to a black Lexus by the curb. It’s a good-looking car except for the red dust caked on the wheels, the mud spatters all over the hood. There’s a stack of files, boxes and a laptop in the back and Charlie twists around in the passenger seat to poke through them. Work, because Don can’t even go crazy and run home to his brother without remembering to bring his work.

They’re nearly home. If it’s Monday, he doesn’t have any afternoon classes, but if it’s Tuesday, he’s already late. His phone doesn’t have any missed calls when he checks it, so it must be a Monday.

“Is it a Monday?” he asks Don.

“Tuesday,” he replies and swings the car round into the driveway.

He parks, and cuts the engine. When Charlie gets out, Don doesn’t. Charlie leans back through the window and Don’s got his sunglasses off, he’s rubbing his eyes. “You want me to check if Dad’s home yet?” he asks.

“Get back in the car,” Don says. “Just for a minute.”

Charlie’s throat closes up and he’s cold, but most of all, he’s tired. This is where the point swings, he thinks, where the curve bends and numbers slide from positive to negative.

“No, no, Charlie.” Then Don’s reaching over and pushing the door open, and Charlie steps back a little, but Don holds out his hand and says “Charlie, please. Please.”

Inside the car, Charlie taps his hands on his pants, slides them over the dash, and finally says “So. You and me. Me and you. That’s - you’re sure?”

Don exhales. “Yeah.”

“Okay. Just, statistically, this would be an impossible event, based on near zero probability so far,” Charlie starts to say but Don closes the distance between them in the shortest line possible. The heat of his mouth shocks Charlie but there’s the trace of strawberry, coffee and he bends, turns so he’s closer, sinking into that heat.

He draws back a little and Don rests his forehead against Charlie’s. “You really don’t want to hear me talk about statistics,” Charlie says, and Don’s eyes crease in a smile.

“Not really,” he says. “Not right now.” They kiss and the kisses are short now, unhurried. Mouth against mouth, then Don running his fingers through Charlie’s hair, kissing the lines of his face and then delving back into his mouth, back to where everything makes sense.

“Where is Dad,” Don asks suddenly when Charlie’s sprawled on the shoved-back seat, his arm around Don’s neck, licking and nipping at his mouth. “Charlie, seriously.”

“It’s Tuesday, right? I think he’s bowling.”

“Oh _fuck_ ,” Don swears, and Charlie starts to laugh, helpless wheezing and Don pins him down and kisses him again, hard, and says “Charlie, no more cars, okay?”

“Okay,” Charlie says and pulls him in for another kiss. “No more cars. Speaking of cars, did we drive your car or my car back?”

“You don’t have a car,” Don points out, and Charlie digs in his pocket for his keys and his license to show him.

 

The house is quiet and it’s not bowling, but the soup shelter, a note on the fridge next to Charlie’s schedule. “You’ve missed a class,” Don says, and Charlie nods. Then Don takes his hands and puts them on his waist, the narrow curve just above his hips, and Charlie closes his eyes and leans in. He rests his head against Don’s shoulder and Don folds his arms around him, and the house is still quiet, but not empty.

“How long till the meter runs out downtown?” he asks.

“Ninety-five minutes,” Charlie answers.

“Long enough for a shower,” Don says. “Come on.”

 

 **Parallel 15**

Washington is cold, and Charlie misses his house, CalSci, his friends. He misses his father a lot. Washington’s a grid city, numbered roads, and he knows how to drive round it, but it’s not the same.

He misses riding his bike on breezy days, knowing exactly where he was, or at least not too lost, all the time. He misses home, but some days now, he forgets to.

Don makes Mexican and he orders Chinese when they need to cook. Their father came up a month after they moved, and Charlie slept on the couch so his father could have his bed.

Charlie’s bedroom has walls of blackboards, chalk dust building up in thin layers on the books and papers covering the bed. When he’s not at Georgetown, he’s there, working. Don’s bedroom is almost empty, just their clothes, the bed, always neatly made.

They fight; they fuck. Sunday mornings, when Don’s not at the office, or away, they lie tangled loosely in bed and Charlie will push his laptop back under the pillows, stretch his arms back and come apart under his brother’s touch.


End file.
